Seven
by StormDragon666
Summary: Young female samurai Sakura leaves her besieged village behind, seeking other skilled samurai to help defend her home. Whether they accept her request for payment or for her is another matter. A retelling of Samurai 7, SakuraMulti style.
1. Sword

Obviously none of you would know that this ('09) summer I visited my brother and noticed his Samurai 7 DVDs and asked to watch them since I had seen only glimpses of it. He agreed. I promptly took them to the house of a friend I hadn't seen since I moved out of state and we watched the entire series in two days. We both loved it. It has my total recommendation (though I don't know about the old fifties movie it was based off of.) For Christmas my brother sent the whole set to me and naturally it warped itself into a Sakura-centric tale in my head when I started to watch it again. And here's that tale.

This _would _have gone into vesper-chan's December "Sakura centric one-shot" contest, if I could fit the whole damn plot into a one-shot (though this won't have too many chapters) and if I hadn't started writing it two days before January starts, which even for me is almost surely an impossible deadline. Sorry, Vesper. Hope you enjoy this anyway~

Notes: 1) Women used to wear kimono as typical clothing, and did men as well? Or did their clothing have a different name? Anybody know?

2) I use some random Japanese words here for the purpose of letting you all know that _yes, this is Japan. _I'm not an idiot adding "kawaii desssuuuu~" for the sake of fangirlism. Words used in this chapter include "choko", that tiny-ass cup people drink sake from, "kimono," which you should know, honestly, and "arigatou," which is "thank you", which any self-respecting anime fan should also know.

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Within the Vault of Endless Tales

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Her first memory was her of her vaguely-remembered mother, telling her, "Don't wander off." Her first act of wisdom, at age six, was to recognize the love that was infused in that phrase. She obliged and did not wander off. But in the next memory, her small modest home was very clearly aflame, and her parents were clearly within it. She sat on the ground unsure of anything in the world, squeezing water from her kimono despite the rain, until someone came and lifted her onto a horse and they rode away together.

The "someone" was a woman who claimed she had been a hired samurai in a country far away, and she was going to give the girl the very same training she'd had, if she wanted it. And yes, she wanted it. Her mother and father would not have wanted a weak daughter. She went to live in the woman's village and became a part of the great family there. She learned the art of holding, wielding, using a sword, and other skills her teacher had learned over the years: striking the ground hard enough to send boulders flying, leaping up and through trees, and learned sketchy knowledge of the ancient force chakra, which could warp the weakest strike into a juggernaut blow, and even heal wounds. (She also learned how _not _to gamble, though her teacher didn't give that lesson on purpose.)

Her teacher told her never to tell anyone about chakra, along with other things. "This is a secret very few people know, and even those that know of it cannot always use it correctly." she said sternly the night the subject was introduced. Carry it with you like a sword: never let it out of your sight and make sure only you know how to make use of it."

The girl was almost twelve at the age of her first kill, and it had been an accident, self-defense, fear; its justification often changed names in her haste to let her teacher know she had not wanted to murder the man who had tried to rip her kimono from her legs. Her sensei assured her that it was all right, and such people deserved death. Better yet, men would never expect a woman, especially pretty ones like themselves, to suddenly take out a sword and exact judgment on them for their demonic deeds.

"In fact," the teacher said one day with a dark smile, "that is our purpose."

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March 30th, afternoon, Tanzaku town, Fire Province

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Tanzaku town was meant for tourists, with its restaurants, gambling centers and teahouses full of geisha. It had living complexes as well, but inns outnumbered them two to one (and teahouses often doubled as inns anyhow). Those drifting through were indeed drifting—one did not need to have a destination in mind in Tanzaku; more often than not something interesting would appear right in front of them.

For Deidara, the theatre was always interesting. People were always trying to come up with the next _Journey to the East_ and hoping the viewers would be throwing their pocket money away to see it again. The shows were always worth it in some way: the actor's flamboyant outfits and makeup and paint, or heart-wrenching singing voices or even simple dialogue—always different, always amazing, always exploding with independence—but he'd only been here a week and hadn't managed to memorize where any of the three theatres were. Too bad.

He'd fine something else tonight. Maybe he would be the entertainer, as he had been the night he came to visit this unique, sensual place. The bartender had been having some great trouble with the two thugs who were all but flashing the women at the two corner tables. It had been a pleasure to dig some clay from his bag—older, dryer clay; these two weren't worth the smoother, more expensive sort—slap his hands on their arms, and watch them discover those arms were suddenly severed, blackened limbs on the floor. Free sake for the rest of the week! And tonight was the last night of that charity. _'Why not? It's early, but sake sounds good right now, mm.'_

He was in the middle of the flashier, happier district now and people were staring. It was probably his hair. He'd been told time and time again how odd it was for a man to have as long hair as he did, but then again—two women were outright gawking at him and he made sure to twist his head just so for their viewing pleasure—not many men had his looks either.

Well, if not his hair then perhaps his cloak. He'd painted a phoenix on the back because he'd always considered birds inspiring (and one that set itself on fire? Kami-sama!) but hopefully not his bag. If people knew he kept clay inside it, and what he did with it, well, he'd have the grace to leave Tanzaku before such a thing happened.

Was that the theatre to his left? Too bad, mm. Hatsumomo's awaited him. It was not a place which one would take children (not that they were allowed in) yet it was not far from the happy, cheerfully-lit places where minors could buy toys or books or food.

"Deidara-kuuun!" a woman cried, waving to him from across the road. She leaned out the door of a restaurant with an outdoor menu display that had literally had a bite taken out of it. Just the sort of place Mayumi would visit.

He looked at her as neutrally as he could without veering to the "disgust" part of his emotional spectrum and walked on a bit faster, hoping she would not follow. Having women trail after you was the dream of any self-respecting man, but no self-respecting man wanted Mayumi, a waitress who had torn open the front of her kimono hoping it would please him.

Hatsumomo's was a place women like Mayumi were afraid to visit. A good portion of the women there, he'd learned, had a good chance of having stabbed someone at some point in their lives. But that was the appeal of the place. Such stories!

And there is was. A low place with lighting only a few degrees up from "dim" with na occasional bloodstained table. Now, this was a place where things could explode into action. "Is that Iwa-san?"said the fat little bartender, polishing the choko. "I wondered when you'd be back."

"Back just in time to take advantage of free drink, mm."

The bartender, whose name was Yoma or Soma or something like that, set a choko in front of him and a jug of some alcoholic drink he'd never seen before. "Here's some of my best. If you'll be in town tomorrow, I'll extend my kindness till then as well. Those two men last week were regulars and damn unwanted ones if I ever had any. Sure didn't mind sweeping _their _blood off my floor. Are you ever gonna tell me how you blew their goddamn _arms _off, boy?"

Deidara took a sip, with his right eye closed and glad for the hair that covered the left. "My secret."

"I mean, that's a katana in your sash there, is it not?" Soma-Yoma pointed at it. Deidara continued sating his thirst. "I saw you go over to them n' thought you were a swordsman n' you were going to simply cut them down—wouldn't've minded that either."

"I'm not really a swordsman-type."

"But a samurai, yes?"

The answer to that was yes, but interrupting was rude, so Deidara behaved rudely as well and ignored him. "If I run out of my secret weapon, the katana can be my backup. Granted, I'm sure I could have cut off their arms that way, too, un. They obviously weren't trained in anything but getting in someone's face." Soma-Yoma had the sort of look of a cat who wanted more milk. Deidara was above giving in to the wishes of someone as lowly as a Tanzaku bartender so ignored his hunger for answers again. "Anyway, I' m done talking about that. I like this place because of the people that come in, mm. You said you know them all. Tell me about some of them. I'm bored."

Now looking thoughtful, the bartender said, "Well, well, sometime last year, early November I wanna say—ah, wait! I have a better one. It happened just four days ago. I would have told you, but you didn't come for your free sake that night, Iwa-san."

Deidara flipped a mental coin for his name. "I like stories more than apologies, Soma-san."

Soma-Yoma huffed a little and began again. "Anyhow, just last week, I was serving some weak tea or other to a couple, and a blonde woman came strolling in. Thirty or so, I'd say. And, Iwa-san, she had a _sword._"

His thirst was suddenly sated, and his now-curious mind prowling. "What the hell would a woman have a sword for?"

"I'm getting to it. She came up to me and asked if I knew any worthy samurai around here—regulars, tourists, residents, anything." He stuck his thumb at himself. "Well I do know some samurai around here, but I asked her why she needed them before answering, and she said she wanted to hire them to protect her village. It's being harassed, robbed or something. She didn't say anything about how she'd pay them so I wasn't so eager to answer. No true samurai would do something for nothing, particularly for a woman, or so I hear."

The blonde could have commented but was far too interested in the tale to interrupt or even touch his sake again. Soma-Yoma continued, "I asked her straight n' simple about how she'd pay them and she got all flustered and shameful-looking, and said she could feed them and perhaps give them weapons to fight with." He stopped, grinning.

Deidara wanted to frown at the insolence of mocking poor people, but kept his face carefully neutral. "And? Did you ever give her any names?"

"I did tell her about a young fellow I'd seen a few days ago who cut off some thugs' arms without a sword, if that's what you're wanting to know." he chuckled. "And a few other descriptions. Never gave no names. She probably just wanted a strong guy to spend the night with, you know? And carried the sword around so she'd look tough herself, I bet. She didn't seem happy with my descriptions so gave me a nasty glare and left, with a helluva lotta eyes starin' after her."

'_At least I ignore women who _deserve _to be ignored.' _the blonde mused, scratching his shoulder._ 'Anyone honorable who carries a sword knows its burden. I think would have believed her, mm.'_ Suddenly Deidara noticed Soma-Yoma was leaning far to his left to see around him. "What, un?" he muttered, turning.

Traditionally, taverns such as Hatsumomo's didn't have many windows. Hatsumomo's had but one, next to the door, and through it Deidara could see the outside of a ring of people gathered on the street outside. They shuffled fearfully on their feet and a few brash ones pointed. Someone out there was speaking, loudly. It sounded like a man's voice, an arrogant on (the sort that Deidara would have gladly blown the arms off of). He left his seat and headed straight for the door; the bartender and several customers in the tavern made a lot of noise trying to follow him. Outside he had to push through several people to see what was on the inside of this ring, and had to take off his cloak just to make himself smaller, leaving only his black undershirt with net hems beneath it.

He pushed past a trio of men, hand near his clay bag just in case, and saw a girl with a sword in hand, facing a man very near twice her size.

For a moment he didn't quite believe his eyes. Were swords now a women's fashion accessory? But then his eyes found her hair—_'What in the world happened to her?'—_It was pink as a sakura tree, hanging down and hardly touching her shoulder. Her outfit appeared to be a pinkish-red kimono of some sort with slightly shorter sleeves than normal and the hem of which did not even reach her knees, though there was something black underneath that, probably for decency. One quick once-over, easily tuning out the large man yelling at her, and Deidara found himself smiling enormously. She was stunning; the men in the crowd had begun recognizing (and vocalizing) that.

The man yelling was insulting the petite girl standing in front of him with a sword, but Deidara was giving quiet admiration to her for it. She had a good form—he grinned at the double meaning—obviously knew what she was doing with her sword, was poised and ready to be attacked, and looked lean enough to dodge around this man twice before he could take a step. Then again, the blonde realized he was a bit biased in this strange matter. He would have to see what she did.

"—and _daring_ to ask the great Shidei Masako to accompany a child to a _worthless, penniless_ village, with new _swords _as payment? Have you neither shame nor pride as a woman, you wench?"

The girl's lip twitched. Either this had been going on longer than he knew, or her patience was wearing thin quickly. "Shidei-san, if you are refusing my offer, we can both peacefully be on our separate ways—"

"_Don't _you dare think I'll be letting you leave this street with your life," growled Shidei, and then, with a yellow-toothed grin, "or your virginity, if you're still lucky enough to have that, my lovely."

Deidara's hand clenched on its own.

The girl was angry now and didn't bother hiding it. "I'm not your _lovely _anything," she spat, moving one foot backward into a more defensive stance. "And you'll be lucky if I let you leave this street with _your _life. Attack me."

The crowd hummed with urgent whispers and gaping jaws. Murmurs of "Save her!", "Run away!" and "What will she do?" circulated. Someone shook his shoulder and he looked down into the eyes of a middle-aged woman with a shawl on her head. "You're a samurai, aren't you, sir?" she grasped his katana and nudged it upwards. "No one else has even a knife! She's helpless! Save her!" He loosened her hand from his katana and assured her that she could save herself, and almost started pointing out the excellent of her stance—but she wasn't there anymore. He didn't risk using only his right eye to catch it.

He lifted his hair and could almost feel the touch of the sun on his mechanism; using it and his natural eye, he was able to see her jumping up as Shidei looked about for his suddenly missing opponent, kicking off the man's shoulder and smacking him with the flat of the blade and she fell back. She landed neat as a falling cat on the ground. Her opponent fell to the ground before her a moment later like a dead ox.

The pink-haired girl glared at the face-down form. "I'm not looking for samurai impostors anyway," she growled, and walked away with sword still in hand as the crowd made way for her.

"Clever, clever," Deidara murmured with a soft smile. "Sword still wisely at the ready…he'll probably get up in—"

The man shot his bear-sized bulk forward with wildcat speed. The crowd jumped back with screeches of surprise. The female swordsman whisked around and their swords met. Her eyes were narrowed, eyebrows close together, glaring up at the bear of a man before her. Her eyes met the bear-man.

'_Meet MY eyes.' _Deidara thought. '_Mine.' _

Naturally, she did not meet his eyes. A swing of her sword-holding arm, her left surprisingly, and the man staggered back with his arms in the air, vulnerable as could be. She would kill him now. He was probably deserving of it with such a personality, the blonde decided. Instead she fell onto her side and kicked the side of his knee. He fell again with a high and strangled cry. The girl flipped her sword up, caught it and thrust it down into the dirt parallel to the man's cheek. A strand of cut hair dropped to the ground and he visibly cowered.

She got onto one knee, holding the sword. "People like you are why this province is so dirty. I pity your mother for bringing someone like you into this world." She tore the sword from the ground and sheathed it as she walked off. Whispers of admiration, silent, pointed fingers followed and Deidara Iwa's sharp eyes stalked after her.

His body tensed up before he knew what was happening, and he allowed it to move on its own, running towards the girl the minute the Shidei tore a dagger from his coat and threw it at her. There was no time for clay now. Deidara reached for his katana, squinted to make sure of his aim, and struck the man's dagger straight out of the air.

He faced the bear-man, his weapon at the ready, but could feel the female swordsman staring at his back. "Some men just can't let a woman go," he said just loud enough for her to hear. Would she understand, he wondered?

"You insolent, fucking—" While Shidei the bear-man began another tirade, Deidara sank his hand into his clay bag and felt his secret weapon forming within him. Shidei was adding something about his mother to the rain of insults. Deidara made a point of interrupting him.

"Shut your mouth."

He tossed the tiny clay bird like a dart and it zipped into Shidei's mouth. His head thrashed once, and he spat out a pink mass onto the ground. Screaming, tongueless, Shidei Masako shot up and shoved the crowd out of his way to run in the opposite direction. They pointed and stared once again. A child and a dog sprung out of the crowd and began poking the severed tongue. Leaving the strangers to their daily affairs, Deidara walked in a straight, purposeful line to the pink-haired young woman, and she did the same. He could see in her eyes, though, she did not have the same feelings in her eyes as he did.

He allowed the new admiration to show through all the other emotions, and bowed when he reached her, a very humble action from any man to any woman. He saw her outright surprise when he rose again. "You're an excellent swordsman. And the first female samurai I've ever seen, mm."

"Arigatou," she gasped. "And you—"

"Iwa Deidara," he gladly supplied.

"Iwa-san—"

"No. Deidara."

"Ah, Deidara-san—" Well, that was somewhat better. "Deidara-san, I have no idea what you did but I've never seen anything like it before. I know this is strange, but I have to ask you something very important to my village." He nodded, and honestly did understand, but couldn't help but gaze at her a little more than listen to her. "I'm here looking for samurai, you see, as bodyguards of sorts."

He cocked his head a bit. "Do you have an older blonde woman with you, too?" She nodded, looking at him oddly. "A bartender just told me a story about a blonde woman who came in looking for samurai to hire, and that she could only pay them in weapons, un. Or something like that."

"That was Tsunade, my sensei. My request is exactly that, Deidara-san." She clasped her hands together, and the fierce young woman looked suddenly vulnerable, innocent. Deidara studied this new persona with great interest. "My village needs strong samurai. We can't pay you much. We can feed you and arm you, and that is all. I've been turned down by more men than this town has buildings, you're the first person to even hear me out this long in three days. Will you consider?"

"Consider?" he chuckled. "I accept." The joy lighting up her eyes had similar effect on his heart.

"Are you sure? You won't have the grand living quarters a place like Tanzaku offers. My village, Konoha, has the same simple cottages any village has, our food is of course not as extravagant, and Konoha has a lot of flowers. In case you happen to be allergic."

"My offer to accept will stand on two conditions," he told her, holding up two fingers. She looked as determined to fulfill them as she had to defeat Shidei Masako. "One, tell me exactly why Konoha is in need of samurai. And two, tell me your name."

"I'm Haruno Sakura." she said with a smooth bow. "Konoha has only Tsunade and I as protectors. There are thieves taking advantage of our weakness. Tsunade and I are taking turns staying back home to fight them back and go to various towns trying to hire help."

Deidara nodded his understanding. A simple reason as any to hire bodyguards. "All right then, mm. When to we leave?"

She turned and started walking off. "As soon as we find five other samurai." she replied.

'_Five other—huh?' _

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I told myself I'd get this done before 2010! It's December 31st, 11:55 PM! YEAAAAH! Though when I post this it may have slipped into 2010...

Strangely for my stories, we haven't gone into Sakura's mind, just one of the multiple love interest's, so we have a little bit of evidence as to how the guy just happens to fall in love with her, instead of having just Sakura's POV in which some guy just up and declares his love, which is of course fun as well. The writing style will change depending on whose POV it is, as you will come to notice. You already know Deidara hates slutty women, likes sake and places in which (surprise, surprise) "explosive" things can happen, like dark taverns such as Hatsumomo's. (A cookie if you know where that name came from.)

By the way, like Samurai 7, the main samurai featured in this story do NOT all have typical clothing for their time, like, say, the anime character Kenshin Himura i did. Google that character for an example of what these guys are NOT wearing (though Sakura does basically wear a kimono, but much shorter than average, and also, um...like, the equivalent of ancient Japanese bike shorts so as to not flash people). I try to describe their outfits well but leave a little room for imagination. I would eternally love anyone who gave an artistic try at the samurai described this story. Perhaps even a quick one-shot to one I fall in love with.

Happy New Year, my friends~

Ta…Storm


	2. Skill

I remember when I first started Airborne and how I thought it was such a good idea (I still do), how I thought about it and other various fanfics during school and while doing chores and such, and I get the same feeling for this. Apparently some of think positively of Seven as well, according to the poll I put up recently. I already had three names I was certain I wanted to include here, and you guys helped me choose the other names.

Also this chapter contains first of many very obvious signs that this is indeed a MultiSaku, so I guess I must also include my first warning of **OOC-ness. **As in, pretty men eating each other over rights to the sweet territory that is Sakura. Mmmmm.

Which samurai will we see here, I wonder? And I wonder how many of you will be tempted to check out the actual Samurai 7 because of this story? Several I hope.

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April 2nd, several hours after sunset, Tanzaku Town, Fire Province

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The letter was short and simple, though she would have liked to tell Tsunade how she missed her, her home, how dangerous and dark the city truly was, ask why anyone would want to come here and be polluted by everything it could stuff down your throat—but no. She could not waste money spilling her thoughts onto paper now. This short method would cost the least amount of money (seeing as Tanzaku mailing centers charged by the number of characters) and also the least amount of time. Any time she wasn't sleeping, apologizing to Deidara-san for wasting _his _time looking for other samurai, or practicing her form was to be spent wandering the town looking for recruits. Sakura read the letter once more, hoping it would give her new drive to go out searching again.

_Tsunade-sensei, _

_I have found one samurai. His name is Iwa Deidara and I witnessed his amazing skill myself. He is a true warrior, and you wouldn't believe how eager he is to help! I am sorry, but I am choosing to stay away from home indefinitely with Deidara-san to look for the remaining five samurai we need. I hope to return home soon and don't you dare give up the battle! Love always, Sakura_

"Love always, hm?" She looked over her shoulder and saw her new recruit standing over her, bending down to look at her writing. That one eye of his was narrowed with strange menace. She would have liked to tuck it away, but she needed his good graces. "…My sensei is like my mother." she murmured. "I shouldn't be paying more than I must to tell her I miss her, but it's just a few more characters, I guess. I haven't run out of money yet. Don't worry, I can still pay to feed you while we're in town."

He seemed to ignore that. The dark stare faded. Friendliness sank in its place. (The mood swings this man had!) "I'm sorry, mm. 'Love always' of course makes me think of a lover before a sensei or mother."

Sitting in the natural vegetation canopy of a public garden as they were, it was difficult to see his expression in the numerous shadows. She couldn't help but laugh a bit. "Tsunade-sensei told me that if I could balance my combat skills and a relationship with a lover at once, I'd be a god. Of course, she was drunk at the time."

"Your sensei drinks?" He sounded a bit interested now. "And you?"

"Hardly. Tsunade-sensei let me once, but I can't remember much of it." She frowned slightly. "She says two cups had me limp as a corpse on the floor. She can down whole jugs and not get…too crazy." Deidara was chuckling, and probably smiling. She made him smile quite often, she noticed, sometimes without doing anything.

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April 3rd, late morning, Tanzaku town, Fire Province

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"And you say a young woman spouted this nonsense to you? Where the hell's your brain, man? Sleep with her and move on! Tanzaku's full o' wenches who'll say they're the daughter of the emperor for a hot meal!" Deidara's fourteenth possibility of the day walked away, one of said wenches hanging drunkenly on his tanned, arm. He sighed, remembered he was standing in the middle of the street, and walked to the side to stay out of the way of the innumerable moving people.

He leaned against the outside of a grocer's, holding his cloak in his arm as the heat of the day came on, leaving him in the black and netted undershirt. _'It's hard to tell samurai from food vendor sometimes. It took me till just a moment ago to realize that man was a weakling inside. Can she tell?' _Sakura did not seem like a fool that would ask any formidable-looking man for help. She must have seen some worthy quality in that Shidei Masako before his vicious insults attracted a crowd, and him, around them.

Well, he had to give thanks for that. He would never have met her otherwise.

What a strange feeling to immediately attach oneself to another person. They had separated for three hours at most, and already his drive for recruiting samurai had begun to drain. He wanted to be with Sakura. Talk about her drinking-happy sensei. Her warm village. Her warm voice. Her.

Several shops down the road two men were clashing swords, but he could tell by how they staggered and growled at every blow that they weren't worth his time. _'Sakura's time.' _He walked in the opposite direction, eyes prowling, senses grabbing, feeling the air. All he knew, he used. It was simple eyesight that caught a figure sitting on a roof some thirty feet above him. But it was no threat. With a hard breath he kicked off a passing horse-drawn cart, off the side of another building, and landed with a soft sigh next to Sakura.

She sat cross legged, leaning slightly backwards with her arms supporting her. Relaxed, sweet. It brought a predictable smile. "Is it easier to find possibilities up here, Sakura?" he asked, sitting next to her. She eyed him almost warily, perhaps because he had "forgotten" to add a formal suffix of some kind to her name, and then moved half-lidded eyes back to the street below.

"It's about the same. But I have a distraction now."

"Me?"

She laughed, a beautiful sound. His ears ached for more of it. And some other sound. "Yes, I suppose." No, that wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Keep looking at the street. I think someone is watching me."

'_Bastards! Die!'_

"Tell me where they are." he said aloud. "I'll kill them."

"No!" she whispered shakily, still with a neutral face. "If he can hide himself from me, he has talents we can use. He might be one of the five I need. I'll turn around and face him later, if he's still watching. I'll surprise him—"

"Should I call you brave or stupid for wanting to face a man who stalks you?"

A shy grin spread over her face till she looked sheepish, and a steadily growing part of him resisted pouncing on her. "Both."

He ignored that and said sternly, "I'll follow you silently, too. If someone attacks you in a dark corner, I'll blow their goddamn head off." Her face was blank and staring and jaw slightly parted. Unsure of what to say. When she muttered a little flatly, "Your devotion means a lot to my village," he narrowed his eye in slight frustration and replied perhaps a little too hotly, "I'm devoted to _you,_" and gave in to the temptation to place his hand on hers. The mouth on it was kept wisely closed and the air around them was quiet and empty of even a breeze.

She kept her eyes trained on his and slowly stood up. He went with her and made certain their hands stayed together. "Deidara-san, I'm going to go look for samurai again. Please let me go."

The smirk came on by itself and he let it stay. "Make me."

She reached for her sword—what were those carved on the hilt? Flowers or birds?—and unsheathed it slowly. She was giving him time to release her hand, and the moment before she tried to strike him, perhaps he would. But Iwa Deidara did not fall back from intimidation. Not from armed swordsmen, not from the creature who had so recently captured his heart. It was completely out now, and moving to a good striking position with unnecessary slowness. "Deidara-san. My hand, please."

"Just Deidara is fine, un."

He let Sakura's hand free and jumped down into the street, surprising a few locals. One particularly angry one picked something out of his burlap bag and threw it at him. The blonde dodged it with a laugh of joy. His declaration was made. She couldn't be ignorant of him now.

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April 2nd, just before noon, Tanzaku town, Fire Province

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Konoha needed protectors. Konoha needed protectors. Konoha needed protectors—a near-stranger was attracted to her?—KONOHA NEEDED PROTECTORS.

Tsunade had been saying for years how surprising it was that her apprentice had never come up to her asking for advice on dealing with the opposite gender. Sakura had seen eyes in her direction many times. But she never saw the people those eyes belonged to coming up and talking with her.

What god had she angered this time, that it would have to happen for the first time when her home was literally in a life and death situation? Better yet, what made the male in question think they had time for something stupid like this right now?

Perhaps not stupid. Just untimely. But she could tell him that after Konoha was saved. Deidara-san _was _being friendlier to her than any boy, outside of Konoha, had ever been.

He was also very purposely distracting her from the most important mission of her life. He could be romantically interested later. Maybe she would tell him how she loved to wake up before the sun and he would laugh, just as he laughed and smiled at nearly anything she said. But her mission came first. Always first.

Looking around, Sakura realized she had spent so much time thinking about Iwa Deidara that she had been walking mindlessly and now had no idea where she was. She turned around, and around again, and mentally scoffed at herself for losing track of herself to such an extent. And because of someone who was hardly more than a stranger! A man and his two sons shoved by her, a black horse in tow and she skipped out of the way. Any more wispy, dancing thoughts of men and she'd be run over by a team of prostitutes if she wasn't careful. But at least Tsunade hadn't been as drunk as Sakura thought her to be when she chose Tanzaku town as their next search point. The greatest success so far because of—

Konoha needed protectors.

Any one leaf of thought on Iwa Deidara bred into a tree and then a grove, and she stopped it from becoming a forest. She walked purposefully now, eyes and ears alert for swords and knives hidden in sashes and belts, smooth conversations with hidden meanings slipping underneath, and eyes equaling the intensity of hers.

'_Speaking of eyes following me…I can't feel that person who was watching me before…' _she thought to herself. A loose strand of hair fell into her eye and she brushed it back with one pale finger, wondering if she appeared unaware. _'And maybe I am. I don't feel eyes in the back of my head anymore…did he leave? Really?' _She wanted to turn around and look through the crowds and then maybe at the rooftops to make sure, but that would be a painfully obvious. If she didn't feel him again soon she would have to disregard him as well as his excellent hunting skills. Damn! Her fingers curled. But she couldn't waste time.

She figured that eyes were the best signal of whether or not a man was a true possibility for her recruit. If a man met Sakura's eyes and curiosity or admiration, or simply acknowledgment, grew there, then he was a worthy soul, though his combat skills would have to be tested some other way. Anyone whose eyes filled with lust or amusement or even pity…well, she couldn't jam the hilt of a sword in their eye no matter how much she wanted to. There were innocent children even in Tanzaku. And a temper was most feared when it showed itself rarely, hers no exception.

A group of women eating indoors pointed at her, and a more timid-looking one shoved the sliding door shut. Sakura couldn't help but scoff. Everywhere except in Konoha, it seemed, men had such a hold on the fairer sex that the relationship was all but slavery. Whenever people began to stare at her and the weapon she so boldly carried, she would think of this, and her pride at having risen so far above that, and her embarrassment would die down.

Another group of eyes on her now. Four men sitting in a neat line outside a shop, about Tsunade's age—but who actually _looked _Tsunade's age—gave her a typical jaw-dropped stare of amazement. They looked harmless enough, but she wasted no time meeting their eyes and attracting their attention more than she could help. The bearded, one-eyed one at the end had the gall to reach out as she passed and try to touch her thigh. She kicked sideways at the hand, effectively making the man punch himself. She turned the corner with a small grin.

This next street had an inn twice as tall as any of the other buildings on it, with a small crowd at the front. Intrigued, Sakura jogged up and stood on tiptoe to see over the people. Just inside the inn was a restaurant sort of area with a large table in the middle at which a very chubby man was surrounded by empty, alcoholic-smelling cups. His audience egged him on to take more and more. Curling her lip, she shoved past the three young men who had gathered behind her to watch and went on again—and saw eyes that caught hers like a fish on a spear.

She turned back and followed the stranger halfway down the street, agilely slipping over a horse-drawn cart and through a throng of vendors to get to him. "Excuse me, excuse me!" she called to him. He turned around and she wasted only a moment to meet his sharp, icy eyes and tried not to dwell on the impressive, two-pronged spear he carried. They were colored no differently than any other blue-eyed person she had met, but it was the silent intensity with which he used to look at her, tearing up and down her person, which caught her attention.

She bowed first. Very important step, that. "Sir, your eyes tell me you've seen something very dark. Were you in the war?"

He raised one terribly thin brow. Suspicious, unwilling. This hadn't started well... "I was, onna-san. But I don't think my eyes are anything special."

"Eyes tell more than swords." she told him. "If I hadn't seen them, I wouldn't ask, but I'm looking for samurai, sir, because my village is being attacked by thieves. We can feed and arm you, and—"

"And pay?" he asked.

The vulnerable piece of her inside cringed and wilted. Outwardly, she tried not to look ashamed as she shook her head. "No. We can't pay you."

Whatever willingness had been in his eyes burned away. "If you can't pay a single samurai, then you should consider hanging yourself. It's even cheaper." He turned around, all but kicking dust at her, and stomped off. Again Sakura's fingers curled. The knuckles cracked. Were she a tiger, her claws would be out and scraping the dirt.

'_Arrogance arrogance indifference insolence insult SPITE SPITE COLD-HEARTED DEMONS EVERYWHERE!' _It would have done wonders to have shouted that random fury aloud, but—temper, temper. Not now. She looked at her feet, as small and shadowed and Konoha seemed now. _'Kami-sama, please. Tsunade-sensei and I can't win on our own. Why won't you give us help?' _

Another pair of feet topped with shapeless, orange pants stopped before hers, and their owner asked, "Uh, 'scuse me, can I talk to you?"

They were probably not Kami-sama's feet.

Sakura looked up, a little more than up seeing as, like most men, he was taller than she. His hair and eyes were the same respective blonde and blue as Iwa Deidara's—_'I won't be coming home with six blonde men, will I?'_—but much shorter, and closer to her age than Iwa. He had on a foreign-looking coat, unbuttoned, red and tipped with a black flame design. This didn't intrigue her more than the _whiskers _he had on his cheeks, though. "Can I help you?" she asked.

His smile was just as great and genuine as Iwa Deidara's, too. "You can show me your chakra, please."

Her fingers fell limp. "What?"

"Don't lie to me," he smiled again, almost chuckling. "I can feel it. You know what it is, you have it, and you know you have it. Mine told me so. Can I see?"

A stranger had asked to see—asked to see!—her chakra. Pigs would fly next. She tried to stall. "If you tell me first what you mean by yours 'told you so'."

"Well, sure. Mine's name is Kyuubi. It looks like a big, orangey fox and he talks to me sometimes. I was just walking around and he told me to look at the samurai vixen. I thought he was joking with me…" His sweet smile stayed, though his eyes burned dark. "And that's you. Please…" His eyes stayed locked on hers and his hand drifted up awkwardly, as though on strings. "Please let me…feel?"

First she looked around, hoping no one was watching. Whatever this young man thought, chakra was nothing to show off on the street like new clothes. There were fewer people around than there had been before, probably because they were drifting away to find restaurants with lunch hour specials. Safer than most streets in Tanzaku would be. She stuck her hand out and he grabbed it straightaway. She immediately tried to pull back; even though her sensei had had chakra, it had never felt so strong. So evil.

It sucked and clawed at her like nothing she'd ever felt, pulling things from her she couldn't see or feel, and in exchange…gave something back…she could feel them. Memories?

She knew without being told that this young man was Naruto. Seventeen, like herself. He hadn't eaten anything but ramen for two weeks, but that was fine. He had aching, angry memories of people who did not accept him. Did not believe the stories he told about a monster inside him. Kyuubi nurtured those memories and wanted him to kill. Naruto was a good person and would not. More than any of this, she felt the Kyuubi-chakra all around her. It trapped her as a lion trapped a mouse, and the same figure of speech could be used for their differences in power.

Naruto let her hand down, letting their fingers hang laces for a moment longer than necessary. She looked up and saw him still smiling, now slightly panting, and blue eyes softly glowing red. "You're Sakura. You love sunrises. And Konoha is in trouble. You're a girl and you're a samurai." He laughed. Well, it was practically a contradictory statement. Then his eyes turned dark again, this time with confusion. "But…your chakra doesn't have a body, so it doesn't talk to you. You don't have an orange fox…or anything. It's just you. It's always just you."

The atmosphere would have turned uncomfortable if he hadn't laughed again. Another simple laugh, the laugh of a child who didn't lie and had no secrets to shield. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto. Kyuubi says he told you that."

Didn't Konoha need protectors? Sakura gathered her scattered, startled self and shoved her torso down in a fierce bow to the chakra-bearing stranger. He stepped back, looking embarrassed, and started to say something that started with, "don't," but she interrupted him. "Uzumaki Naruto-san, yes, I'm Sakura, and I am from Konoha." She rose up again. "Did Kyuubi tell you anything else about Konoha?"

"Yeah," he said with an overenthusiastic nod. "You need bodyguards—I mean samurai!—to protect it from evil people. Well, I'm your samurai!" He shoved aside the left side of his cloak and lifted a worn sword from an even more tattered blue sash on his waist. He unsheathed it and slashed it on the air in front of him. "Show me these bastards, Sakura-chan! I'll cut 'em all down!"

"Samurai number two." she muttered to herself. Naruto looked over at her questioningly, and she scurried to find a reply. "I, I said…um, you see, for the past hour or so I've been thinking that someone has been watching me, and I don't suppose that was you, was it?"

Once again Naruto's expression warped. His hands tightened on the hilt of the old sword. "No. Kyuubi saw you and pointed you out to me five minutes ago. I just now…" His head titled up slightly as he trailed off, looking over her head and gazing up the now-empty road. Not distracted now, Sakura spread out her senses, and immediately felt the same red intensity on her back, and on Naruto. How long it had been watching her and taking advantage of her stupid carelessness, she would never know. She turned to face it.

A black figure with a red hood stood alone in the middle of the road. Her watcher, without a doubt.

Closer inspection and a handle on her uncertainty and mild panic told her it was a redheaded man wearing a short-sleeved, maroon cloak over an expensive-looking undershirt. Perhaps even more threatening than something hooded and unknown. She would have to see. Her new recruit stepped in front of her, limply holding his sword in one hand.

"What the hell do you want with my vixen?"

She grasped her own sword before anything, out of habit, and then burst out, "Naruto-san, what in the world—?"

"Who are you?" the redhead called. "There's never been something like you in this world. _What _are you?"

Naruto held his sword steady in two hands now, leaning slightly forward. "I'm the samurai who'll kick your ass, you creep, if you don't back off!"

"Don't pretend you're a samurai because you can hold a sword, stupid brat. I mean her." Naruto ignored the second comment in favor of screeching, "I am SO a samurai!" but Sakura stepped out from behind him so the redhead could see her. She noted thick lashes and a rather lean figure beneath the cloak, as well as a cloth-wrapped, child-sized pack hanging off his back and sticking out slightly near his arm.

The thick-lashes eyes became slightly wider. "Yes. You. You." He walked forward and stopped at a barely respectable distance. "You radiate power. Like art." He stared more and more and Sakura's hand began to cramp more and more as she held her battle-ready stance.

Naruto butted in once more. "Like 'art,' you said? What've you been smoking, man? Sakura-chan, let's go, this guy's weird." He grabbed her hand and pulled her back.. The redhead's arm lashed out sideways and a dark appendage burst from behind his back and struck Naruto's hand.

It was an arm, longer than any person's arm, and it stretched from the pack he carried. "Pretending to be a samurai and now her lover." he spat aggressively. "Leave this maiden alone. She has better things to do." The arm retracted into his pack but he paid it no mind.

"Sakura-san, yes? Hailing from Konoha, three days' walk from here?" She nodded, stiff and battle-ready and not sure if it was appropriate to stay in such a pose now. "I would like to extend my services to your village and its plight. Will you have me?"

Samurai recruits coming left and right! "Of course! But please tell me your name."

"Akasuna Sasori." He bowed, but hardly very low. Sakura could sense his opinion of himself. "I'd rather be merely Sasori to you."

"The hell kind of a trick are you trying to pull?" The blonde grabbed Sakura's sword-holding arm and pulled her back to his side. "What's that thing on your back, a giant doll? Sakura-chan's village doesn't need men who play with dolls as protectors!"

"I'm a puppeteer, you insolent fool!" he growled, eyes blazing. "You might have recognized that, and perhaps how I move it without touch, if you knew what a samurai is. For example—"

"For example, _me!_" Naruto interrupted. "And maybe _you _would have recognized that if weren't so busy trying to weasel your skinny ass into her bed!"

"Only someone as desperate as you would think of such a thing." Sasori scoffed.

Naruto grabbed her arm again, as Sasori might say, desperately. "Sakura-chan is mine!"

"I wonder what cow's ass that idea dropped from."

"AACK!"

Naruto's hand shot to the collarbone his cloak and undershirt exposed to cover the bleeding cut that suddenly appeared there. Without a cry of surprise to match the blonde's, Sasori looked down at his matching little wound and regarded it almost indifferently. Sakura sheathed her sword, attempting to do the same with her anger. "If you keep arguing like this I'll take your severed, jabbering heads back to Konoha instead of all of you!" she growled quietly. She thought of adding something else, but changed her mind, and unsheathed her sword again. The tip nearly poked Naruto's nose.

"And I'm not anybody's, Naruto-san. A person usually makes claims like that over a person they actually _know. _Please keep your damn mouth shut until you've known me for more than five minutes, please!" She sheathed it again and whipped around to face Sasori. "And don't egg him on, Sasori-san! Neither of us will be able to sleep tonight if you do."

Something quite like, "I think he'd like to arrange that whether we argue or not," came from behind her, and a more obvious remark from the redhead, "I think you're poorly masking your desire for the same thing," were comments she both ignored.

Her legs felt a little weak for a moment when they both took a break from glaring at each other to gaze quite—admiringly?—at her, so she chose to turn around and head back to the public park where she and Deidara had slept last night. "Come on. I'll take you back to Deidara-san and buy something for you all to…eat…"

Deidara…Hadn't he said he was going to…

"Sasori-teme? What the hell are you doing here, un?"

Whatever kept young Sakura from biting something in pure frustration, she savored it. _'Tsunade-sensei…wish me luck till I come home…' _

666

I don't think I've ever written such an obvious fight over Sakura before. I feel so bold and brave even though I'll be doing much more "satisfying" scenes than this later on. So, now Sakura has recruited Naruto and Sasori (I cut the "no" from Sasori's name, by the way, so yeah, that's on purpose). I had great fun typing their little fight (and lots of time for the whole chapter since we had three snow days in a row over here). By the way, both Deidara and Sakura's rejects this chapter were just random guys. Not important.

Naruto (who is wearing his "sage mode" outfit in this story because I find it quite impressive) has a hella huge amount of chakra, which has molded together to become an entity which calls itself Kyuubi, and because of it, Naruto literally hears voices in his head, poor guy. And as you Samurai 7 fans may have noticed, Sasori refuses to believe he's actually a samurai, so he, Naruto, is the Kikuchiyo of our group. Our gentleman Sasori has chakra as well, but not very much, only enough to make strings to control his puppets, so honestly Naruto would stomp him in a chakra battle royale, haha! Once again I'd love anybody's artistic renditions of the samurai in Seven.

Also this chapter was mainly in Sakura's POV, though in the future I think I'm going to do a bit less, since Sakura has a secret motive that will be known to you only at the end, and since I can't have you guys knowing that motive, or even which guy(s?) she'll end up preferring. We do know now, though, that she's seventeen, that underneath her too-polite exterior she hides a vicious temper, loves sunrises and has no idea how to deal with the attentions of men. Which she'll be getting tons of, unfortunately for her. MultiSaku and all, you know.

Ta…Storm


	3. Speed

I showcased the Samurai 7 in my school's anime/manga club, managed to get a friend hooked on it, re-watched the original, oldies movie, and thought about this fic every damn day. It's like Airborne all over again. I hope to make this worthy of my own fangirlish hype.

And beware the **OOC-ness **that haunts all Sakucentric fics of this nature. If you don't like men uncharacteristically and sometimes irrationally chasing after Sakura Haruno like I do, then the "back" button's ready for you.

Also, for our Japanese lesson this chapter, we have 1.) _tempura, _which is a popular dish made of vegetables (or seafood) battered or fried. 2.) The respectable term _danna _has no real English translation, but in the context of Sasori and Deidara it is something like "teacher"_._ 3.) Also there's mention of _aku, _meaning "evil."

666

April 2nd, early evening, Tanzaku town

666

'_**KILL THEM KILL THEM KILL THEM KILL THEM NARUTO WHY WON'T YOU JUST KILL THEM!'**_

Naruto hadn't agreed with Kyuubi so fervently since…he couldn't remember when. But Kyuubi was always saying to kill things, and Sakura needed all three of them and still needed three more. And wouldn't it be just his luck if she cast her spell on those three too but _oh hell _he'd bury them alive before they could so much as smile at her—

'_Stop polluting my thoughts you stupid dog,' _Naruto thought, idly licking the end of one chopstick. He could feel Kyuubi seething at the old insult. _**'I am a fox, you foolish pup.' **_He could sense Kyuubi's eyes, or his head, or whatever it was he used to look at things when Naruto's eyes were somewhere else, moving. _**'As is she. The only female worthy of you I've ever seen. Tear up these other fools right now. I know you desire it.' **_

'_Shut up.' _

After a loud and attention-grabbing fight between the homosexual-looking blonde and the redhead who carried a doll on his back, Sakura kicked the former in the stomach and smacked the latter with her sword sheath and requested firmly that they shut their mouths. Since they kept up some fierce glares after that she decided to get them all something to eat, looking worried. Smart choice.

He couldn't remember the name of the place they were in, but he liked the traditional look of it. The tables were set in one very long aisle, and they were all low, perhaps a foot off the ground and guests sat on their feet around them. Each table was separated from the others by mats of sewn reeds sticking out of the wall, as tall and wide as a person. The privacy…_would _have been nice. Maybe.

Most of the food came on enormous plates and everyone plucked off whatever they wanted and put it on their own normal-sized plate. There was one sauce-lathered square of pork left on the meats platter. Sasori smoothly pierced his chopsticks into it, and then Deidara did. Sasori's long fingers cricked as the two glared at each other.

"Deidara." Sasori grunted.

"Danna." Deidara said. Naruto didn't know if it was actually out of respect or was meant as a sarcastic bite. Sasori glared like it was an insult and began pulling the morsel toward himself. Deidara pulled as well. The way this restaurant cooked this dish made the pork especially chewy, which meant resistant to teeth and pulling, and so it could—_'I know what chewy means, okay? You think I'm that stupid?' _Kyuubi grumbled and didn't answer him, instead turning his eyes-and-head to view Sakura.

'_**Look at her. She's afraid to interrupt them for fear of falling out of their good favor. How foolish a thought! Pup, tell her she will be followed by hordes of men whether she wants to be in their favor or not. Go on.' **_

Naruto told his chakra-beast to shut up and went back to nibbling his last hunk of tempura. But the influence won out in the end. After all, in this particular square table, Deidara and Sasori were next to each other, and on the other side, he sat next to Sakura. Why hadn't he taken advantage of this sooner?

"I bet it's a mating ritual," he whispered to her quite seriously, and her lips formed a giggling smile behind her chopsticks. Kyuubi, seeing this, purred.

The blonde (he was stupid, probably) took that moment to glance over across the table at her. Sasori lifted his pinky from his chopsticks and flicked it. A wooden hand darker than ink burst out of his rucksack and snapped Deidara's utensils in two.

"The hell!" Deidara spat, shaking his nearly-hurt hand while Sasori dragged the meat lazily to his teeth. "Fuck! I call you danna and I get my hand almost chopped off? Well, I guess should know better than to respect a man with a woman's face who paints his goddamn nails, un!" Naruto's lips parted in dark wonder at the sight Sasori's face twisting in rage. With Kyuubi's help he could nearly sense Sakura's wonder as well, veined throughout with anxiety. She wanted to say something to soothe him. She'd lose a valuable samurai otherwise.

Setting his utensils down on the meat platter, Sasori stood up. His eyes remained burning hatefully down at Deidara. "Sakura, I'm afraid if I'm near this idiot any longer I'll be tempted to gut him. I'd feel more comfortable helping you find more samurai, if you please." He proceeded to take a cloth wallet from a pocket low on his maroon cloak and drop a random and generous amount of coins on the table. Sakura began to tear coins out of her own wallet but a stare from the redhead stopped her. "Four instead of the three you needed, actually," he added, walking away down the aisle as the rest of them stood up. "I'll probably gut him anyway."

But after a speech like that, no way was Naruto letting him go with his moodiness. He walked ahead and blocked Sasori's path. "Who do you think you are, commanding her like that?" he snapped. "She's taking you right into her home and putting the lives of her friends and family in your hands so what you _shouldn't _do in return for that is act like a pissed old woman!" Sasori was now giving _him _the hateful glare, but Naruto couldn't care less.

Behind him, Sakura and Deidara were scrambling away from their table and dishes. "Naruto-san, for the love of Kami-sama, you're making people stare!"

"No one insults you in front of me!" he snarled without looking at her. She'd see the red fox chakra bleeding into his eyes if he did. "Especially not him."

Some of the hate faded out of the redhead's expression. The smugness that took its place was as welcome as disease. "Oh? What's so special about me?" he said—taunted.

"What's special about you is that naaah!" Sakura was shoving him from behind through the aisle, past dozens of gaping, curious faces of other restaurant patrons. The hostess at the front door looked happy to see them go and disappear into the twilight. Once they had found a relatively peaceful street corner, Sakura stopped and he was free to turn around and continue. "Sakura-chan, you don't have to defend him! He's gonna stalk you all the way to Konoha whether you beg him to or scream at him not to!"

"He's right." Naruto saw Sakura's open surprise—_**'She's SCARED of him, you stupid pup! Soothe her!'**_—at Sasori's remark. "Your movement, your voice, your talent, all attract me to you. Don't think you can be rid of me. Your other two 'samurai' are boys swinging swords and pretending to men. Only I am worthy of you."

Fuming, Deidara spat, "I'm the same age as you, you stupid bastard!" and wrapped a hand tightly around Sasori's neck. "We're looking for samurai, not telling lies or proclaiming love or telling young women with absolutely no subtlety you want to molest them. So how about we look for recruits…un?" The stare-off between the two picked up again, till Sasori grew an unpleasant-looking smirk and nodded. He pulled out of Deidara's strangling grip and waited for a command.

Maybe because of so many eyes on her, Sakura stuttered before deciding, "The southern quarter. I haven't been there yet. And when Tsunade-sensei had her turn, she didn't either."

"Had her turn?" Deidara asked as they all walked southward together.

"Tsunade-sensei and I took turns leaving Konoha in search of help so someone could stay behind and fight the bandits. Usually for two or three days at a time. We've been doing it for over a month now."

Tilting his feminine head, Sasori remarked, "These are very persistent bandits. Is there something in your village they want? Ancient scroll or jewel or some such thing?"

The woman samurai shook her head, dodging around a caravan pulled by two horses without even looking at them. "We have nothing but this year's harvest, and it's not as though that's special. We think they keep harassing us because we're the only village for leagues and leagues that doesn't kiss their dirty feet." Her eyes grew unconsciously harder. "And it probably for that reason that no one sympathizes with us. What village doesn't roll over for a group of thieves? It's not right, they say! Like we've shunned their religion—people are _this pathetic!_"

She dragged one hand down her face in frustration, but when it came away, it revealed a smile. "One day soon I hope to cut them all down and Konoha's children can kick their severed heads around for play. The bandits, I mean, not our neighbors!" The sheepish face she made outshone the adorability of a kitten pawing a string. Naruto purred. Sakura switched her gaze between all her hired samurai as though expecting an attack from one of them. Crickets in household gardens chirped peacefully somewhere nearby.

"We're…entering the southern quarter." she said, poorly veiling her nervousness. Her small left hand was tight on her sword. "I'll head down the street where the famous inn, Nishimura's, is. Please meet me at the arch in a few hours." She turned on the heel of her sandal and headed down a street where a glistening red roof towered just above all others.

At the arch, a few hours, at the arch, a few hours, Naruto reminded himself firmly, heading down the leftmost street. He told himself this because he'd undoubtedly go on till dawn looking for samurai if that's what it took—_**'Because you're an accursedly hopeless fool'**_. By nature he would want to, and now because of Sakura he would need to.

A vixen's movements and tenacity on the outside to attract, innocent kindness and wisdom to ensnare. But he'd be the one to pounce, eventually.

'_**Gods above, is it I or you who's the demonic fox?'**_

'_Both of us.' _Naruto replied flatly, and meandered over to his first possibility.

666

April 2nd, an hour after nightfall, Tanzaku Town

666

"You're in one hell of a situation, my friend," said Aku Toshiaki, his second applicant of the night. "It'd be nice to defend nice people against bad people if you had any damn weapons to do it with. You can go ahead and get yourself impaled by those men, but leave me out of it, if you please." He lumbered away and disappeared into the crowd of merchants and beggars and tourists, the bell on his two-pronged spear jingling like a child's toy. Like an idiot, like he was, like Aku Toshiaki.

One with the uncanny combo of eyes and mind that Sasori had could deduce a dozen things about men like this with a single glance. His surname wasn't _Aku_, obviously, though why he would pretend he had such a dark name was a mystery, considering he looked to be a man of decent integrity despite his slightly ale-stained breath. If "Aku" Toshiaki had any scraps of dedication to anything, even speaking as though he gave a damn about the words, Sasori would have considered him for Sakura's party of defenders. But he hadn't. In fact, after that first glance he wanted to leave. But out of politeness and some gratitude for having found someone in this filthy city who wasn't repulsive in some way, Sasori had given him some time to talk and hear his own voice.

Kindness. So few deserved it. Now that the man was gone, Sasori found his eyes narrowing into a baleful glare on their own. Aku Toshiaki deserved nothing from him. There was someone else infinitely more deserving, more captivating than he, than puppetry, who deserved everything so that perhaps one day he could understand her.

'_Female samurai,' _he thought for the tenth or so time that hour. _'Such an odd phrase. Such an odd, endearing creature.' _He thought about her more than was proper, especially now, when his mind was most definitely not supposed to be focused on her, but samurai recruits for her home. Unfortunately, he realized time had gotten away from him. Sakura had requested they be meet at the arch, a landmark in this part of town, an hour past nightfall. That time must be past. Damn.

Sasori turned swiftly around, brushing past a group of women who so stared slack-jawed at his looks—or his puppet; sometimes that was it. It was a dark rucksack slightly smaller than his own torso; people often stared and wondered what he kept in it. Those who found out died. Deservedly. Always.

A splotched horse came trotting down the road pulling a cart vegetables of some sort piled inside. The driver was hardly slowing to give him time to dodge. Sighing at his offensiveness, Sasori leapt clear over both cart and horse—'which shall we put first now?' he laughed a bit foolishly—waking the driver out of a lazy stupor and making him pay much more attention to the road now. Other folk on the street were watching by the time he landed, admiring him for his skills now instead of just his face, the shallow scum.

He turned the corner and saw the red, sweeping archway that welcomed tourists into Tanzaku Town's southern quarter. It was made up of mostly hotels and low-grade restaurants (and people of equal grade, he knew now). He spotted a long swath of gold which had to be Deidara's—_ridiculous_—hair, and a patch of red topped with pink next to him, the identity of which he would know forever. The boy who played samurai, Naruto, was still missing.

Sakura was combing her hair idly with her fingers. Sasori slowed his walk so as to more easily focus on watching this motion. She did it with equal parts fingertip and wrist. The wrist gave a slight, smooth pull at the end to finally release itself from the smooth cherry strands. By doing this without looking, the action appeared mysterious and vague. Deidara would have called him a crass name, an especially crass one if they were still in the organization together. Sasori would have reminded Deidara his sandal was loose when it probably wasn't, and said blonde would fall on his womanly ass bending down to look. It would have been a fond memory.

He was at her side now. A glance in his direction, a brief sigh, and he wished he had stayed out searching a bit longer. "No luck?" Deidara said pointlessly from where he leaned on the arch.

"A thousand people per street, and I found two men who were at all worthy of fighting for you," Sasori addressed Sakura. "One turned out to be a very good actor who thought he'd make some money off of this. The other was a good man, but undisciplined. Foolish. Don't get me started on the rest of this town."

"I don't like it here, either." she replied. He watched her finger the white under-robe beneath her short, red kimono. "It's not even the crowds, you're right, it's the people. Every dirty, desperate soul under the sun is right here in the streets. I don't know what walk of life you're from, Sasori-san, but village life much cleaner and happier than this."

"I could swear I told you to address me properly. My name is Sasori, not Sasorisan, and you will address me as such. Does this suit you, Sakura?" Still leaning against the arch, Deidara stood openly frowning. Perhaps sticking his middle finger up as well. It seemed a bit harder to see out of the corner of one's eye when it wasn't life-threatening. Deidara's idiotic expressions aside, his recruiter did not answer him. It was beginning to worry him when he saw she was staring wide-eyed directly down the road. He followed her gaze, and parted his mouth in surprise.

Naruto was walking triumphantly towards them, hands laced carelessly behind his head, the night breeze lifting his long, red coat. He made a somewhat intimidating figure, but this was dwarfed by the samurai—the two samurai—following him. Immediately the redhead knew who they were. Though night had thinned the crowds, those remaining knew who they were as well.

One was taller than the other, and had longer hair.

The smaller one drew a hilt-less, plain sword from a violet belt and charged. Sasori pulled chakra into his fingertips before the charger had taken two strides; he had maneuvered both the Kazekage's hands out of his casing and was ready to wrap them around this intruder. His puppet's hands were less than a foot away from the young man's face.

And then they weren't.

He saw where the attacker was going, tried to stop him, but the Kazekage was not fast enough. He heard, all too slowly, the sleek shriek of metal on a sheath, and then metal on metal. Sakura had unsheathed her sword and blocked the attacker's. Their blades and faces were inches apart. Sakura's brows came together in confusion; the attacker blinked and stepped back.

Naruto came running up and clapped the new man on the shoulders. "What the fuck was that?" he screamed. "Raising your sword on a woman! Teme! You don't deserve to serve Sakura's village!"

All too aware of his own lack of speed and foresight, Sasori withdrew the Kazekage's wooden hands back into his cloth pack. He was thankful for once of Deidara stating the obvious then. "…Uchiha?" And yes, they were.

Uchiha Sasuke sheathed his sword, bangs falling into his eyes. "You're alert and quick." he said. "Unfortunately that makes you superior to many samurai in this godforsaken city." He met her eyes. "Your friend Naruto has told me your story. I am a samurai of unparalleled strength with no requirements for payment. I would much rather assist you than return to my family's home as my father wishes. You will add me as your fourth recruit."

Naruto growled at his insolence; Sasori studied him; it was not often one would come within such distance of an Uchiha clan member. Sakura's eyes continued in what seemed to be a staring contest with the young Uchiha, and smiled with both mouth and eyes. "_Hai, _Sasuke-san. You are my fourth samurai."

Naruto laced his hands behind his head again. "I told you I'd find you one!" he chuckled. As he did, the second Uchiha at last came to stand beneath the arch with them. Tall and bearing midnight hair not quite as long as Deidara's, he was bearing his demon eyes down on Sakura.

'_No.' _

Naruto moved between them before he could. "Sakura-chan, this is Uchiha-teme-Sasuke, and his uncle, Uchiha Madara."

Madara, dressed in casual, deep-blue clothing except for seemingly misplaced crimson gauntlets on his forearms, had several inches height difference from which to gaze down at her. It was not the eerie, tender and hungering sort of gaze Sasori feared he would have to defend her from—something he sensed, but never saw, about Naruto—but more along the lines of sweet surprise. But this man was an Uchiha. What he allowed to be seen on the outside was obviously not what he hid within, or behind his red, demon eyes. It was the nature of their clan to lie and then dominate with unparalleled power, so the shogun himself could tell you.

Wise as she was to such threats, Sakura kept her voice only mildly interested, and baited him. "You look a bit young to be someone's uncle."

"His father is my _very _elder brother." Madara replied in a deep, charming voice innate to all their clan. "And you're the first person to call me young in a long while. Sasuke here is always trying to tell me what an old, crotchety man I am at twenty-three." To the side, Naruto cocked his head, wary and unsure of this innocent-sounding man. Madara lifted the corners of his mouth slightly. "Am I too old to join you in your mission, Sakura-chan? I'd love it if you were to have me."

Oddly, neither of the blondes reacted to such a thinly veiled desire.

Looking quite ecstatic, Sakura bowed respectfully to both Uchiha, thanking them deeply for their dedication. When she rose again, Sasuke glared suddenly at his uncle. "Some hunter you are, uncle. Following me for weeks to bring me back to Father, and this girl changes your mind?"

"Your father is power-hungry scum." Madara chirped with his eyes and charming smile still on Sakura. "Sakura here is sweet-natured and very loyal, and works for the benefit of her people." He glanced over at his nephew. "Hell, my brother could learn a few things from 'this girl,' Sasuke. Come, let's all help her find that last samurai. I haven't been to a little village in a long time. Bet it'll be fun."

"Uh-uh-um, it is!" Sakura stammered, clapping her hands together. "Once the bandits are gone, I can show you, if you like. If we're rid of them by summer, the villagers will insist on you staying for the Firefly Dancing. It's everyone's favorite time of year in Konoha."

"It sounds fabulous," he said, now looking over her head and the seething Deidara's. "I would love to hear more, my dear, but I believe I see a candidate down the street that could be a very serious possibility."

As a unit, they all looked. There was a brawl going on far down the street, at a curve where part of the scene was blocked by a building, that is, until three wooden beams from that corner were suddenly torn out of the wall. One was impaled on the huge red spear of a man in garb that looked vaguely like Shinto robes. Also impaled there was the foot of a man now lying in the street, surrounded by scrolls he had dropped. From the opposite end of the road, the six samurai heard a screech.

"It's in His hands now! And He declares that all heathens will _fucking die!_"

666

Well. That could be just about anyone right thar.

I rushed the second half of this chapter in an effort to finish it up before I go to my local anime convention, Naka-kon, with my friends tomorrow. I'll be there in under twelve hours, in fact! Just barely made the deadline. I feel because of the rushing I made Madara a more serious and predatory than I originally meant. He's been hanging with Sasuke too long. He'll revert to his lax, playful self pretty soon (to show he's already loosening up into his mischievous self, I had him use the word "fabulous". Ha!)

Also, if you've been reading the recent manga, you'll have noticed that Sasuke has grown bangs, and in my opinion they look _damn hot. _He has such a look in this story, and if you haven't seen his hair like this yet, here's a reference picture: http:(slash)(slash)img(dot)youtube(dot)com(slash)vi(slash)3qk19rnCDXU(slash)

Well, all seven samurai have been introduced (some of the others in the poll will still be used in different ways; I have special roles planned for Kakashi and Itachi, for example). I wanted to spend another chapter gathering them, since it's pretty damn unlikely Sakura would find all six of her recruits in…what, two days? Yeah. But the story's gotta move on.

I hope you learn a little something from each POV change, by the way. We've seen that Naruto's affection for Sakura is darker than it first seemed, and he does _not _like people insulting her; Sasori and Deidara _both _think the other is overly feminine, for pretty face and girly hair respectively; and by implication, Sakura doesn't knew whether to be herself around the samurai like they seem to want her to, or just be nice and keep in their good favor. Chill, she'll loosen up. Gotta sleep now.

Ta…Storm


	4. Goal

Oh dear God what I hiatus D: I was lost in a world of Hetalia, yaoi and Pokemon (with combinations of the first two, but thankfully not the third). Thankfully, I'm very capable of being a yaoi fangirl and a Sakura fangirl at the same time. Since the last chapter, I've gone up a school grade, visited Germany and become president of my school's anime club…again~

Thank you all for sticking around to read more of my work, however long it took to appear…If I am to be on a pedestal, I want to deserve it. So here I am, back doing the fanfictions that I'm known for.

Now, back to business. Sakura has found her last samurai, so it seems; he just needs recruiting. And identifying (LAWLZ NO.). Because not many people call other people heathens these days. Or even in those days that this story is taking place in. And as for your chapter-ly Japanese lesson...I think the only word here is "_hentai_." I would find it pretty strange if you didn't know what that means.

666

April 2nd, when the night is very young

666

Beautiful. What a fucking beautiful town. People came here because they appreciated its beauty and all the beautiful things it offered for a quick swap of coin and pleasure. Lots of pleasure. Hell, lots of prostitutes—what a drinking game: Count the Prostitutes!

Tanzaku gave to and accepted anyone, even religions the general public would rather pretend weren't there. Tanzaku had one of three Jashinist temples in the world, disguised as a livestock slaughterhouse.

Having just returned from there, Hidan was in a damn good mood, a _damn _good mood. It was a long walk back to the inn, and right through the road where most of the other churches and temples were. He was in a mood almost good enough to not give a shit when people sat outside those whorish, false churches and praised gods that didn't exist. Such a fucking shame, losing perfect followers to gods like…like…how the fuck did you pronounce that? That wasn't even Japanese. Fucking foreigners should go back to the mainland, or wherever the fuck they came from.

Like that one. What a wretch, falling onto his knees for such a Carnival-trick god. Wretch. Stupid wretch. Stupid people. Fucking stupid! Hidan pulled the leather tie that held his scythe onto his back and prepared to do him a favor.

And Hidan did indeed do the guy a favor, and his dirty blood spilled out into the street and painted his scythe all the redder. _One less faithless drudge, Jashin. One less._

But the guy wasn't dead yet, not with a ragged cut through his side, which probably should have punctured at least a lung, and _definitely_ some big vein or something, since he was bleeding like a freaking stuck pig and screeching about it enough to raise hell. (Well, of course he'd raise hell, because worshipping as he was a moment ago, he sure wouldn't raise Heaven.)

Out of the kindness of his heart—yeah.—Hidan started a sermon for him. Maybe it was a weak spot, but he sort of appreciated guys who appreciated pain. And what a fucking deal he was making about his pain. Hidan just kept getting louder to talk over him, and people kept staring and pointing and oh, it was great.

"—and he declares all heathens will _fucking die!_"

The man screeched and began to cry. Jashin, what a waste. That'd be a great scream for a sacrificial rite. "Death to all heathens like you! This shit god you're crawling all over, what the fuck is it? A bird? Where's its freaking head? Your god is a headless bird? Jashin is a beast with horns stretching higher than mountains! His tail circles the entire world! You're in his shadow right the fuck _now!_ Do you see?"

Scream, scream, flop, scream—dammit, Jashin wanted fun prey, not prey that flopped predictably like a fish. This piece of crap was done. Hidan raised his scythe and lowered his arm a little, curling the ends of his blue-nailed fingers. He held it playfully, almost like a bat—and reversed his hold suddenly, flipping the scythe in his hands, and brought it down like a hammer. The screams stopped and the wretch's blood sprayed sprayed sprayed spilled spurt ohh _yes_.

People who had been watching him in the street started yelling, and he heard hefty footfalls as a couple of them ran away. Most of them were just pointing. Hidan lifted his scythe again, and through the second and third blades he spied something pink. He hadn't seen any sorts of pink in Tanzaku today.

By whirling his weapon around a bit and holding it one-armed against his back he could see the pink was the hair of a girl a few years his junior, probably his senior in sexual activity and wearing the most god-fucking-hilarious outfit he'd seen in a long time. The clothes were offset by the blood on her cloth sandals, which was the wretch's; it had sprayed far, apparently, or she'd come close enough to be sprayed by it, or both. And shit, was she pretty.

"Sir! I need to ask you something important!" she called across the corpse separating them.

Hot and needy women could even ignore dead bodies these days. What the hell was the world comin' to? "Not really interested in sex right this moment, lady." He said, but gave a mixed message by staring at her anyway.

She bristled like a porcupine, and his mouth curved up into a stupid smile, and then half-laughter, as she burst out indignantly, "I'm not a prostitute! I need your swordsmanship skills to help defend my village from attackers! I'm collecting samurai who will help me fi—"

"Why do you have a sword?" Hidan pointed at it, sticking out of the sash round her little waist.

"Because I'm a samurai," she replied proudly. "Like you."

Okay. Okay. Mouth shut. Let the little girl talk. Let—"Bhahahaaha! Learn to lie, stupid bitch!" he howled.

He cracked his eyes open to try and see her expression, and he had to commend her acting skills. The bitch looked genuinely mad. Hell, she actually looked good mad. His laughing subsided somewhat, and he realized she was talking. "—show you I'm serious, you stupid motherfucker!"

'_Did she really say—?' _Hidan thought, and couldn't decide if he was impressed or painfully amused. He stood up straighter, blinked, tried to take the situation in again. The girl, wearing a red, white-trimmed kimono that was _way _short—ah, shit, she had leggings or something underneath it, covering her practically down to the knees—had just pulled her sword up out of her sash. She lashed her arm like a snake had just bit it. Hidan started to erupt into another good fit of laughter when something thin and black burst into his vision and struck him in the face.

It forced him back a step and stopped his laughter in his throat…and hurt like a bitch_. _Hidan stood up again and felt the center of the pain was in his nose. With two fingers he pressed against the right side and pushed it back into place on his face with a goddamn satisfying _crickk. _

The pink girl glared at him like his bloody nose was nothing to her. Shit, it wasn't. She'd held her sword by the handle and lashed her arm out, whipping the sheath off and it'd spun over and hit him full-on. Cunning, lovely bitch. Just…bitch! He swung his scythe up and let it hover in the air a moment before bringing it back down.

He growled, "Start praying, you _cunt!_" and by the last word he was rushing towards her and hearing a crowd around him crying out and running.

She leaped forward too, making men behind her yell, and her sword clashed with the handle of his scythe. The blades cast long shadows over her and turned her striped her hair bright and dark with intervals of pink shadows. Pink, what the fuck was wrong with her? "What the fuck is wrong with you?" he said, thinking this.

"What's wrong with your filthy mouth?" she spat back. She pushed, one hand on the blade and one on the hilt. Hidan felt his feet slide back a few inches in the dirt. Fuck, she was strong. "Nothing's wrong with me. I'm here because my friends and my family are in danger every hour I spend not defending them. Nothing's wrong with me because I'm doing something that matters. What the fuck are you doing?" She pushed again, another few inches. Hidan ground his teeth.

What had she done to have this strength? What drug had she taken? Was she a witch? Jashin called his favorite female followers witches, but she certainly wasn't his follower. Something was wrong. No woman could have this caliber of strength. Something was so, so wrong with her. He strained his eyes looking her up and down to find it. Something hiding in her long sleeves? In the inner layer of the kimono? Something in the kimono was likely. Hell…maybe he'd lied before, maybe he was somewhat interested in sex as this moment.

With a quick exhale of not-quite-laughter he pushed back against her, too, and she was shoved back more than a few inches. In the space now open between them Hidan raised his great, red scythe and cast more shadows on the sword-wielding girl. She watched the weapon rise and her eyes went beautifully wide at it came to its highest point. Down it went.

Hidan caught a blurry glimpse of movement but really didn't give a shit. He kept the scythe going down, down, down, and wasn't even pissed when he saw she'd dodged it completely. Wasn't even pissed when she came around from his left and punched him flat on his jaw. Was in too much pain to be pissed when she'd practically made his mouth fucking concave and _what the fuck was she. _

Another quick punching motion, one he made himself, had his jaw looking less revolting. He sat up, staring at her, hating, intrigued. She panted and stared back. "You're on soldier pills, aren't you, you goddamn druggie! No tinyass _girl _does this shit to me, no _man _alive does this to me, you hear? You hypocrite, you think you're some kinda samurai when you do that shit?"

"_Kami-sama, _his mouth!" guffawed some douchebag behind the girl. Hidan's eyes hunted for him and found him: a towering shithead with hair long as a woman's, gauntlets on his forearms and eyes as bloodshot as a drunk. "Sakura-chan, don't take him. We'll find someone else. You know, if I lived in your village I wouldn't appreciate it if you brought me a fighter who talks like a drunk."

"Like _you _don't look drunk, fucking blood-eyes!" Hidan screeched at him. "Why are you standing by her, man? Did she get you to do this shit?"

A blond kid in a red coat made this ridiculous thrashing movement behind him and was pulled backwards by a redheaded person Hidan couldn't see; he suddenly couldn't see either of them for the massively tall blood-eyed man.

"Of course." Blood-eyes chirped—chirped!—back. "What more honorable place for a true samurai than to defend a fine lady's honor and home? I hope you aren't the false sort that tries to call itself a true samurai?"

"I'm not 'the false sort.'" Hidan growled, glaring at him. "The only 'false sort' of samurai I can think of is one who hides behind a woman!"

Blood-eyes stared evenly back. No. Proudly. He would take no insult like that. He _liked_ where he was. Hidan's eyes were drawn back to the samurai girl. The long-haired man liked standing behind her and defending her purpose. Had she given him some of her inhuman drugs? Was he a bodyguard? Shit, like she needed one of those. She and him probably just shared a drug addiction. Maybe he could get in on it. Maybe he could get in on her.

The girl had finally stopped panting and their whole group was just standing in the middle of the road, causing something of a traffic jam as carts and hopeless walkers meandered around them. Hidan's fingers tapped and danced on the handle of his scythe. "You know what!" he cried suddenly. "What the fuck ever. I'll come with, little girl. If you tell me how you're so goddamn strong."

Her face lit up like a New Year's lantern. Jashin,was the maiden ten years old? "Thank you! I'll absolutely tell you! Once we get there."

"Ff—what?"

The redheaded person had stepped up again, and now it could at last be seen that this was a man, though with a more effeminate face and lean body than Hidan would be caught dead with. Perhaps he'd been starved recently. And this observation was if you ignored his freaking _red, _red hair. He was saying something to the pink samurai girl that made her look pissed off. Hidan eagerly watched her face and stepped closer to try and hear exactly what she snapped back at him, but she was done talking already.

The pink girl walked up to him. Close enough to touch. "My name's Sakura." She bowed particularly low. Respect, that was kind and humble and whatnot. She came up again. "And you?"

"'M Hidan." he muttered, staring at her again. She had green eyes, he noticed.

"My comrade over there says he recognizes you." Hidan could hear some hidden wariness in her pretty voice. "He claims you're part of some…some sort of cult, that, uh, sacrifices people."

"It's called _religion. _It's only intolerant shit like your comrade that say religions are just glorified cults." He spat. "I am a faithful follower of Jashin, who hungers always for blood and favors of flesh. Wherever he wants me to go, I go. Wherever I find some fresh hot blood, I give it to him." He paused and there was just enough space for her to insert her own comment.

"If you can wait a few days, I can give you plenty of fresh blood." She promised him. "My village is surrounded on all sides by bandits, and the men behind me have all vowed to come and help me drive them away. I have nothing to offer your or any of them except shelter and meals. Would you help me, knowing that?"

Since he was still pissed off Sakura's sheath-throwing trick, he paused and pretended to act like a lack of supplies mattered one ratshit to him, but the cold, fearful stiffness that started to enter her posture didn't really please him. Didn't like it at all, in fact. "Yeah, yeah. I just want you to tell me about your strength, seriously. So, come on. Spill."

"I told you, once we get there," she said, laughing a little. She began walking backwards.

"Is he the last one?" cried the blond kid in the red coat he'd noticed before. Sakura turned round to walk forwards again, and said something fast and upbeat to him. She shoved his shoulder playfully as she went by, and walked speedily down the road. The young blond followed her like a little dog.

What the hell was up with her being so happy? Whether she was a true samurai or not—and she probably…she abso-fucking-lutely was—it was unlikely she was as seasoned as the average male one. She couldn't possibly just ignore the fact that Hidan had disemboweled a man in the street. The disemboweled man was still lying back there, for Jashin's sake. What woman just left a scene like that…like _that?_ A really happy one? A woman of lion's strength like Sakura? Sakura the lioness? The fuck.

Something was definitely wrong with her. _'Tell me, Jashin. Is she a samurai? A real samurai? How can that be? Come on! Tell me about her!' _But as always, Jashin offered no immediate answers, and the realization that another sizable quest for answers lie before him brightened his spirit.

He probably would have shuffled irritably through his thoughts for a while more before the flash of pink caught his eyes again. She was turning around and walking back towards him. She appeared to change her mind about her pathway and started towards a lonely corner where they were out of the crowd moving in the street, and the dark of night and lack of lit torches on doorways concealed them from peering eyes all the better. They stood under a curving, extended rooftop, where stacks of empty crates and stone blocks the size of hunting dogs sat in neat rows.

The other men Sakura had somehow hired gathered together, too, and _shit _were they a freakish crowd. The redhead slipped between carts and walkers like a goddamn fish to get to the rest of them and was carrying something on his back as big as a baby and hey, maybe it was. He ignored the blonde puppyboy and the blood-eyed douche to find…another blood-eyed douche with shorter hair and a more pissy face. And another blonde one. Another female samurai? Oh, Jashin, please let it be a woman, too.

"I just thought I should…finalize everything," Sakura said, leaning a hand self-consciously on the blunt end of her sword sticking up out of her _obi_. "I have a group of very capable samurai…" She went around and said everyone's names, making it a lot easier for him. His was said last. That was nice. "I honestly didn't believe I would manage to get this many. " She looked around at all of them. All of their eyes. "Remember that you're getting nothing but food and weapons from us. Places to sleep. There's no money for you at all."

"I don't need freaking money!" the puppyboy burst out. "This town is an awful example, but there really are samurai out there who just want honorable things to be done. Sakura-chan, I'll defend your village, on my life, and anyone who hurts you will have his face torn off!" He flexed a hand whose nails could have been an animal's claws.

The other six stared at the puppyboy's passion; Hidan became curious if such passion could be directed towards Jashin's will. The kid certainly had the charisma covered.

"Sakura, pay no mind to him." Said the dead-eyed Sasori. "If Naruto has yet to prove his worth in battle I doubt he ever will. I think we should leave as soon as possible. He will turn tail and fade into the wilderness once we're on the road to your home."

But Naruto heard. He whirled around and went right up to Sasori's face, who wasn't watching him like he was threatening or anything of the like. "What the hell is your problem with me? Just because I don't flash my pretty talents all the time, I'm not a samurai? That flimsy crap is your excuse? You name the time and the place and I could knock you—"

Before he could finish, Naruto was being lifted off the ground by the collar of his red cloak. Madara, who held it, thrashed his arm slightly to toss Naruto a few feet away. "Please close your mouth before your raging saliva lands on Sakura-chan," Madara said airily.

"Perhaps he will when you stop licking your lips at her, you disgusting _hentai._" Hissed his nephew. Hidan's eyes went joyously wide as he bore witness to what must have been a family feud.

It was bait meant to start a fight, but Madara was apparently too wise to take it. Unexpected, that. In the background, Naruto was growling something in a curiously dark voice, but Hidan's attention was caught by Madara's eerie smile, and rat's-blood eyes. "Well, if I do, so must you, Sasuke-chan."

The little lioness stepped deliberately between the three of them, and bean fiercely, "No one needs to—!" She was interrupted by someone pulling her far too gently to the side, out of the sunlight and farther into the shade of the extended canopy above them. The effeminate redhead. Oh, that one was subtly preying on her, no fucking doubt.

"Let them have their fight, Sakura." Said the redhead (his girly, blonde counterpart said something mean or bitchy but Hidan didn't really hear). "If one is beaten senseless, we will know he is unsuited to protecting your village. Sasuke, would you behead one of them?"

Why would he support the younger Uchiha instead of the one that was older and looked like less of an arrogant dick? Freaking weirdo and his freaking weird logic. Hidan called him out. "What the fuck are you supporting the little one for? Madara, behead your brother or the loud kid! I'll pay ya!"

"For the love of God, Madara, please do it!" Deidara called.

"Oh, he's my nephew, actually." Replied Madara. "And I don't want to behead either one of them so much as I want to make them just…go away." Madara said, and reached over with one of his freaking long arms and took hold of one of Sakura's wrists. She now had a samurai holding each one. The image was pathetically clear. The males' eyes, the grip of their hands, the distance of their bodies, Sakura standing so terribly innocent and awkward between them. Well, if Hidan wasn't mistaken, he'd bet they both wanted to fuck her blind, and eat her alive besides. Well, fuck if they'd ever get to.

"You guys gonna run away with her or something?" he said, pointing at them.

"Take one step with her and your severed hands will be on the ground before you can breathe."

Hidan curiously looked at the mouthy blonde, and cocked his head again when he saw some sort of change in his eyes. He couldn't tell what it was because the boy was moving forward too fast for him to get a good look. Deidara told him something to the effect of, "calm down," but it didn't appear to make much of a difference. Only when Sakura wrested free of the twos' hands, almost headbutting Naruto, did he slow his advance. And when she _did _headbutt him, he stopped altogether and stepped back with a hilarious little whimper.

"_Kami-sama_, stop! Everyone—" she whirled around and grabbed one of the stone blocks off a stack and slammed it to the ground. "_stop!_" Hidan's feet skittered back of their own free will and his body absorbed the shock of its vibration. It was a pile of fragments and shards now.

"Hey, he was—"

"Shut up! I don't care!" People in the street were looking over into their corner now, peeking their heads over the stacks of blocks and crates. And the wiser ones were moving along faster. And Sakura ignored them. "Here I thought giving everyone to chance to formally meet, and, and socialize would be good! I don't know what's gotten into all of you, but it needs to be finished right now! We're leaving! Please follow me!" She bowed so quickly it was comical, and then began walking briskly up the street.

He was shivering from head to toe.

_Such ferocity and power in the fairer sex! Unprecedented, unknown! O ye faithful disciple, capture that lion in My name, and claim it in thine. _

Hai, _Jashin-sama. _

It took somewhere around half an hour to find one of three gates leading out of the walled city, and by that time it had to be an hour to midnight, he estimated. Hidan had a flash of memory of the things he loved about the place: the maddeningly hot and expensive beauty of the place, the hideous diversity and…and…and he couldn't remember. All he cared to remember now was the young woman walking in front of him, and all he cared to think about was how she would react to Jashin's will. Was her judgment good enough to realize that it could only do her good to step into Jashin's great shadow with him?

When only a flat field and an empty dirt road stretched in front of them, she turned back slightly. "We will follow this path another few hours." Her eyes made no secret of studying them all. "Around that time, we will pass a valley filled with wild horses. We will camp there, and after waking, turn west and Konoha is nearly a straight path from there. Is this all right with all of you?"

"I will find us a suitable camp for tonight whenever you request." announced Uchiha Sasuke.

A high-pitched voice behind him mocked, "I will find us a suitable camp for tonight whenever you request!"

Sakura whirled around and faced them all. It wouldn't have been quite a lie to say her left foot stomping into the ground creating an echo. "Who was that!" Six samurai chose to say nothing and look innocently away, or appear righteously irritated. "I apparently have a petty five-year-old in my group of samurai. I wonder who it is. Was it you, since you think you're so superior?" She took two wide strides and was suddenly in Sasori's face, and his mouth parted with a sort of startled awe that changed his entire face.

"Or you, since you're certainly not above being a child?" she spat at Naruto, who held his arms a little closer to his sides. It seemed clear who the alpha was there.

"Or why not you?" she whirled again and glared at Hidan, but did not approach him. "Being as gossipy as some fluttery girl. I see something in every one of you that's—that—" Sakura's fists shook in the wide confines of her red sleeves, her eyes burned, and gods, did they burn—but then the lioness behavior began to melt, and something sheepish and even horrified took its place.

"Do you feel all right?" someone said, but Hidan couldn't care to acknowledge who. Sakura was scared.

"Excuse my outburst," she said, and bowed again. It did not look nearly so amusing as the first one had. "I'm sorry. I don't deal with…stupidity very well. I ask only that you all act your age, and you will get the respect you deserve from me." No, not nearly so amusing, and only desperate. Why did she maintain the mentality that without her acting so nice, her samurai would up and leave?

"I don't deal with stupidity well, either." Murmured the littler Uchiha. "Even minor stupidities. Like this excessive apologizing, Sakura. Stand up and speak to me as you are. Your typical attitude is not going to prompt me to abandon you or this mission."

A silence followed Sasuke's statement, wherein a bird cawed ear-piercingly somewhere above them, and six samurai began to form a mutual, unspoken thread of hatred for Sasuke Uchiha.

"My typical attitude can get a little violent," Sakura mentioned and fingered the side of her sword hilt with adorable nervousness.

"Preferable to acting like a servant." Sasuke replied, and walked forward. He had almost passed her by when he added, "Return to smiling as though you mean it. It suits you far better."

He walked past her on the right side and her eyes strayed halfheartedly in that direction before meeting the rest of her samurai. The scared Sakura flowed away. The proper one, the beautiful one, returned. "Then I won't act like a servant. Let's go! And if we come across any dark characters in the road, don't be merciful." She turned on the heels of her sandals and ran.

Immediately after her came Deidara, the phoenix painted onto his coat billowing impressively after him, and even more blatantly: "I'm _not _five years old, un!"

666

April 3rd, as the sun rises

666

Whenever the sun rose, Sakura was sitting up and waiting for it. This morning its light fell on a happier, more hopeful body than it had in months.

Sasuke had indeed scouted ahead and found them a pleasant hollow between hills, protected from wind at the sides and open to the sky. Here the samurai had lain themselves down for the night. Naruto and Sasuke had spent the first half hour of lying down staring at each other over her shoulder, and she was immensely glad they and the others all slept now, and she was alone in the world of the conscious. More immensely than that, she was grateful, and shivering with fierce optimism.

Tsunade would think she was blessed by some god when she came back with _six _willing and incredibly able samurai, and six pretty ones to boot. Perhaps she _was _blessed. She and Tsunade had been taking turns reaching out to samurai around the land since February with no results at all. What luck to have all that reversed now! The bandits would be cut down at last, and they'd burn in hell for the torture they'd put innocents through.

The young woman observed a pair of birds flying together from one tree to the next, nearly hopping. Creatures of such plain, good heart. Exactly, yes, exactly, like the residents of Konoha. Moving through life so perfectly, so innocently, deserving all good things that came upon them. People she knew to have good hearts like Lee, like Kakashi, like Konohamaru, like two hundred more…

And these people burning. Bleeding. Inoichi and Maka. Ebisu. Children: Udon and Yura and more. Unless those demons were struck down and bled out, this black horror would continue. Gods, she would bleed out every single one herself if she could, but she never could. Too many. Too many filthy faces and hands with crusted blood, and hands pulling at her kimono and feet viciously stomping on _her _villagers, the filthy beasts—!

Her fierce and familiar loathing for the bandits was calmed, to a degree, when she noticed Madara was awake and watching her, lying on his back and balancing his torso on his elbows. It was difficult to not notice when he watched. Madara appeared to be a warm and affectionate soul, but he had demon's eyes. He was either a good person with unfortunate eyes, or an undisguised liar. She had yet to find out which.

"You're awake very early this morning," he said, not sounding like an undisguised liar in the least.

"Every day." She corrected, forcing a little cheeriness into her voice. Would he realize it was false? That she was wary of him? "It's something people in my village think is funny. Not many others are early birds. People who sleep in…like that—" She flicked her eyes to Naruto, who'd rolled very close to her in his sleep and was snoring a bit. "I just don't get the appeal."

"Even if your mission didn't require you to sleep less and travel more, you'd wake at this time?"

"I'd have run half a lap around Konoha by this time!" she said a little proudly.

"Well, I'm afraid I can't relate, my dear. I do love sleeping." His eyes crinkled just a little, the way eyes did when the rest of the face was smiling. Sakura felt herself rather prompted to think it was genuine. Madara's eyes slid away to her right, where Sasuke lie on his side, using his arm as a pillow. "Sasuke-chan might relate, though. Little brat just glares at the moon half the time. Sasuke-chan, open your eyes! You can't fool me." Sasuke did open his eyes, but only to look far, far to his right. Lying on his side as he was, this only served to let him look up at the sky.

His uncle looked up at the sky as well, and his overly confused expression made Sakura grin. Towering, crimson-eyed Madara was quite funny. "That would be the sky, yes. And that would be the ground. And that would be some grass—"

As Madara went on naming things, Sakura suddenly understood the possible significance of Sasuke's curious staring. She looked behind him—one hundred and eighty degrees to his right, where he had tried to look—and her eyes came upon nothing but a grove of trees, growing excellently green in the mid-spring. But that could not be all. She scanned further, readied her hands to grasp her sword. It would be needed within the minute. Yes. There.

In the thickest branches of the nearest fir tree crouched a man in dappled grey robes. Perfect clothing for blending in with the pale light of twilight…or dawn. Far too perfect. Sakura stood fluidly up and ran up the hill.

"Wake up! A spy! Follow him!" she shouted again and again behind her.

Both the Uchiha were at her heels already; Madara had grabbed one of his arm gauntlets and Sasuke was already beginning to run past her. How could he be so fast? No one but Lee could outrun her! She clenched her free fist and tapped her reservoir of chakra: instantly her legs pumped faster and harder and Sasuke was getting father and father behind. This man couldn't be allowed to escape. In the worst and only case she could manage to imagine, he was a part of the bandits, and was running back to them to tell his fellows that the village they were victimizing was bringing in warriors. That alone made her speed after him.

Something tore the branches from a tree off to her left. A flash of yellow. Naruto and the fox-beast inside him? "Danna! I'll circle around him!" Deidara yelled.

The noise behind her grew moderately quieter. The man in grey remained hardly a hundred feet in front of her and he was tiring now. Yes, good! Tire and trip and fall and die! Sakura stilled her sheath and brought out her sword, holding it in her left hand whilst the right was held outward for balance.

So close now! She could hear him panting now, the frightened little beast. So he deserved! She widened her stride, felt the glorious pull of her muscles, and let the sword fly. It buried itself in the man's right shoulder and his scream was music like justice in her ears.

Moments later, something massive and square came from behind her and struck the man on the leg. It took her a moment to get over the surprise and realize Madara had thrown his gauntlet. The man was tripping and tumbling now. She jumped, preparing to kick down at his face as she went over—and her leg was grabbed.

"M—aaah!" Sakura was pulled from mid-air and slammed back-down onto rock-hard tree roots. The man tore a mask away and revealed a face she could scarecely see, reeling as she was from the drop to earth. She could see what may have been a tiny knife clenched between his teeth. This he took in his left hand and heaved forward towards her.

One good kick to his torso made him groan and rear back. She pulled back her other leg and was startled out of her mind by two blades clashing together and the mysterious man's head flying over her shoulder. She looked up, vision clearing, and saw Hidan in his strange and pastel-colored priest's robes, his massive red scythe held all-too-precariously against the spy's back.

"Hey. Hey! Was that you or me?"

A glance to the side showed that Sasuke had approached the man's other side and held his flat-ended sword in a similar position, if nearer to the victim's neck. Instead of answering Sasuke tossed his sword lightly behind him, where Sasori stood and caught it for him one-handed. Sasuke himself meandered over an especially large room and crouched by her.

"Thank you for actually understanding me. I knew Madara would do nothing but play with me as though I'm a toddler." He glared accusingly at his uncle who stood moodily under a nearby tree. "Clearly I'm serving someone who's not an unbearable idiot."

"I'm sure she's immensely attracted to your belittling your family." Madara said caustically. As she let Sasuke take her hand and pull her up to a standing position, Sakura made a point of saying and doing nothing at hearing that.

Such comments had popped up quite frequently among these samurai, and it was more confusing than anything. A dark joke between them. She certainly wasn't above saying her swordsmanship wasn't attractive. It damn well was, and if they were admiring and respecting that, then all the better.

"No, actually I must sit." She told Sasuke and gently took her hand from within his. She sat down next to the man, paused—some respect for the dead? No. Not for this.—and pulled at the pockets of his robe. One held a water container, another a cloth bundle of dried fruit—"Sakura, put that down! If you want something to eat, don't take that!"—and with a roll of her eyes at Deidara's silly, wrong impression, felt underneath the _obi _around his waist. A single paper. She unfolded it and read through the shadows of three heads leaning over hers to read with her. Only a few characters. Messy and written in haste.

_Follow her. Report on return trip. _

"Your return trip or his?"

"Hers, of course, _baka_."

Their voices became very quiet in Sakura's mind, and only her thoughts made any discernible noise. Why would they follow her this time? She and Tsunade had left the village many times in search of help. Never had the bandits bothered themselves with it at all. They cared enough now to send someone who would find out what she was doing…or how long she was doing it. How long she was away and how long Konoha would be that much more helpless.

"They're beginning a final attack." She said aloud. Madara and Deidara quieted to hear. "They could only care why or how long I'm gone if the village's lack of defenses was of greater concern to them than before. And that could only mean they will take advantage of it this time." Taking advantage. Again. She tore the paper and dropped the scraps onto the corpse.

"Shall we run?" suggested Naruto.

"Exactly," she said, grateful for suddenly having those words taken out of her mouth. "If we're all on a steady pace, we can be there this afternoon. And maybe save Konoha from being over…overrun!" She leaned down and all but tore her sword from where she'd dropped it and broke into a wildcat sprint before she could stop herself.

The next several hours passed quite literally in a blur. Sakura's mind blossomed with pictures and living, moving memories of faces that could be bloody messes by now, and the trees and roads and tiny villages that went by were mere splashes of color impeding on the world of memories that mattered far more to her. Occasionally one of the samurai would try to speak to her, and she once managed to tell Hidan to back off, but for the most part the only noise was feet pounding on dirt and on grass. A sound of progress.

Once she rolled out of her memory-world and looked about her true surroundings. Deidara and Hidan were on her left and everyone else was on her right, in varying stages of tiredness and alertness. The sun told her it could only be slightly past noon. The flat, green ground dotted with trees told her they had come even farther than she'd dared to hope; the village of great trees and leaves, an island of trees in a land of flatness and grass. This was the fertile land of Konoha. Her heart began to race. Madara must have heard something curious in her breathing, as he asked if she was all right. His warm voice and his hellish eyes helped her to answer properly.

"I am! I'm all right because we're almost there!" she gasped. Both the blondes and Sasori were looking ahead a bit apprehensively. "Ready your weapons. We'll be running straight through the bandits' right flank to get to Konoha! We'll push right through!"

"Yes!" roared Naruto. "I'll show those bastards they should never have hurt Sakura-chan's home!"

She was really beginning to like Naruto's passion. It was charming, and here it was useful. Her memory world was fading now and she could focus more on the world around her. She could focus on the problem before here. That problem would appear within sight in under a minute. And she could shed more of the hellhounds' disgusting blood. Any minute now. Any minute now! There they were!

They were a dark and pulsing mob, just like they were up close. Close to two hundred, at least right now. A fair number, considering how many would come and go randomly. At her side, Naruto made some noise of surprise, and Sakura didn't blame him. Few gangs of petty thieves arranged themselves in near-perfect lines to attack, or had captains sitting on black stallions, or bloodstained ribbons tied to their spears.

"Those are soldiers," Sasori said almost confusedly.

"They're trained." She replied. "They're—they're fighting! They're moving forward towards the gate!" They were here with only minutes to spare. The bandits' captains were urging them loudly on to the lone little archway that marked the entrance to Konoha, a structure wide enough for a wagon to pass under, but would stand about as much chance of surviving that storm as the villagers would. The first cottage in Konoha stood hardly more than a stone's throw away from it. And standing directly underneath this archway was a delightfully familiar head of long, blond hair.

"Tsunade-samaaaa!" Sakura all but screamed.

Tsunade visibly jumped and looked over the crowd of bandits to see her student, a mere speck in here vision now, come running behind them with six men in tow. She grinned and unsheathed her old and faded katana, and shouted something none of them heard over the bandits' zealous yelling and war chanting.

Sakura copied her sensei and unsheathed her weapon. Around her, she could hear her samurai doing the same. With all their power, they would win. The bandits would meet the fate they deserved. They came closer and closer until one of the men at the back turned and saw a group of warriors approaching. He screeched something that had half the army turning with him and then their true size became apparent.

They were more than they had numbered when Sakura had left home three days ago. The senior captain Kakuzu wasn't riding his grey stallion. More men had helmets. Perhaps they were soldiers. She didn't care, and if the samurai rushing up by her side to attack with her were any judge, they didn't care, either.

Sakura leapt high as a man's head and landed on the shoulders of her first victim. She slammed her sword hard into his collar bone and heard the crack and crunch. His death was the first in a long path they would have to carve themselves towards the archway.

Safety waited there. Tsunade-sama, and hope, waited there.

666

Now that's what I call a long chapter. I thought that'd be a good way to win back some favor from people who know I haven't updated a thing since…what, February, March? Here I am, okay? Brick me. I acknowledge the ridiculousness of how much I deserve it.

Well…in relation to the story, all the samurai are gathered here under Sakura and at last at Konoha. I had a little trouble with Hidan's POV section in a way I can't quite describe (actually, all of it was…perhaps because it's been a while?) but hey, he's here! I tried to infuse a bit of a gossip into his persona. He likes to watch what other people do and be all, "Oh, it's _on _now, bitch!" Plus he's the first to call Sakura a lioness, a concept I carried over straight from another story of mine, "The Greatest Gladiator." And he started out thinking she had such great physical strength because she was on drugs. Lolz.

Isn't it irritatingly amusing how Sakura is oblivious to rather obvious affection from her hired samurai? She's now thinking that their comments towards her are some manly joke, or they're indirectly complimenting her "attractive" swordsmanship. You'll soon be given a reason as to why she's so relationship-ly retarded.

Another aspect of her we learn in this chapter is her rather black-and-white, intense love and respect for good people like Konoha residents, particularly her dear Tsunade-sama, and her hatred of bad people like the bandits, as well as the fact that she completely supports killing people on their moral level. I mean, I hope you picked up on her killing intent in the second half of the chapter. She's too busy fantasizing about killing bandits to realize she has half a dozen men fantasizing about _her. _c: I hope to see you next chapter, and I'm glad to be back in the Naruto world!

Ta...Storm


	5. Defense

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! And a happy belated birthday to Vesperchan, who had her birthday on the twenty-first. I wanted to write her a little something. Do any of you know the poll about the Mafia two-shot in my profile? I was meaning to dedicate that to Vesper once I got around to finishing it. I had planned to keep the project and its dedication hidden from her notice by first telling her I was writing a one-shot about a high school play, and hiding the real project in plain sight, in my profile poll, and once I posted it, I'd be all, "Lulz I tricked you!" But...suffice it to say that I'm having trouble getting that story started. I know where I'm going with it, certainly, and I have many scenes in mind that I'd like to put in, but…the problem basically amounts to making Itachi and Sakura have their first conversation. It's hard.

I opted instead to update a story I know she likes, and simply say, "Hey, this one's for Vesper!" so that's what I'm doing. The Mafia tale will have to wait till I can get past that roadblock. I confess that since I published The Night Under, writing anything, fanfic or original work, has been a challenge for some reason. Also, my family has been surrounding me during the holidays and I can't just up and abandon them for computer/writing time like an anti-social brat.

For those reason,** this chapter was previously posted incomplete**. I just posted what I had at the time, so you'd all have _something, _and I was late as heck anyway, and** now here's the completed version of Chapter Five**. Get ready for a large number of small fight scenes, and afterward, the villagers will finally see their saviors. You may or may not be surprised by which villagers get attached to, or are at least interested in, which samurai.

Oh, and your Japanese lesson for this chapter includes _yukata_, which is a thin coat…robe…sort of thing. I'm quite sure that green thing Tsunade wears is a yukata, so that's what I'll call it. Then there's _obi, _which is basically a sash tied round your middle. Tsunade will also once say _minna, _which is basically saying "you" or "everyone" to a bunch of people at once.

Now then…Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone on FF, and happy belated birthday to Vesperchan!

666

April 3rd, early in the afternoon, not quite a quarter mile outside of Konoha

666

Blood. O, blood! He'd had something of a fascination for it even as a child. Was that why a spray of blood mattered more to him than a man dying at his feet? Sasori cared very little for anyone dying at his feet. It made his shoes filthy. Almost everything around him was filthy. Filthy men in admittedly clean uniforms, though varied and random as a Gypsy's, and bloody sashes tied to their weapons and dirty smiles that all but screamed aloud their black deeds and their lust to commit them again.

He had killed three so far, all with the Kazekage's hands. A grace it was that he had learned this art, this method so far superior to killing with human hands. His own hands only moved the faint intangible strings that connected to the puppet's hands, stretching out of his pack like his own newly-grown set of arms—he would hide the entire puppet body and all its mechanisms as long as he could. They slashed left, right, clashed with spears two or three at a time. Always, his ears were assaulted by yells and vulgar cries that insulted everything from his manhood to his absolute foolishness in attacking them to his sure future in the hands of the devil. None appeared to have the verbal grace to voice such threats properly.

When it began to seem that the men had no battle virtues but their numbers and handsome weapons, Sasori was clubbed in the back with something massive and he nearly fell onto his stomach. Quick footwork had him leap forward a pace and then whirl around, both the puppet's arms ready. Coming at him next was a youth with spectacles and hair far too grey for his age.

The Kazekage's left arm clashed with a dagger the man held. It was a short, cold thing, the sort that would be used commit murder from behind. "Konoha cannot be in danger of attack from this." he noted more to himself than the attacker. "Where are the true monsters? I didn't come here to fight the likes of you."

The man's spectacles shone and his lips curled. "The likes of me? No man here will move without the command of the likes of _me._" He pushed on his dagger and in response Sasori lowered his body slightly. The leverage gained let him push the youth away, but he hardly staggered. Sasori wasted no time in lashing out at him anyway.

In a most acrobatic fashion, the man flipped backward and then slid nearly sideways behind the legs of another man, and then disappeared behind a shield of three others. _'A petty thief.' _Sasori thought, and a small piece inside of himself wriggled in disgust. _'Sakura would have no trouble dispatching him. There must be more formidable men here.' _

Deterred by the bespectacled man, he turned around—cut a man's arm—and swept his eyes across the sea of attackers. Hidan's comically massive weapon rose high and slammed downward, only for hardly a thump to hit his ears afterward. Caught midair? Hit out of his hands or—

A spear was coming, whilst the holder shouted, "Little _wretch!_" and Sasori was not fast enough. The man's spear thrust into his right shoulder and cut a ragged gash through his cloak. He caught himself on his right foot, puppet's hands floating above, and smiled. The attacker growled and added, "You feel your wrong now, you fool? You see what your 'good deed' has done for you?" He'd been handed far too fine an opportunity. The right shoulder, of all places! He grasped the spear in one hand and tightened his fist; the blade separated from the circlet binding it to the wood.

"There is nothing there to feel," He replied, and was nearly proud. "little wretch."

The Kazekage's hand turned clockwise till the fingers pointed down at Sasori's enemy, and the swords within expanded and thrust down. The blood spray was violent and induced satisfying cries from nearby comrades. Their blood would come next. The blood of murderers and the blood of monsters.

A flash of color so far out of his vision as to nearly be behind him caught the puppeteer's eye. One glance, thankfully done, proved the color to be Sakura's red clothing as she performed some movement that was not quite running and not quite a series of backflips. A kick off the ground, a step, a second, a push off the ground from the left hand and an ensuing flip, all pushing her backwards and a measure to the side. Such entrancing action. Such an action could only be a defensive maneuver, though, an attempt to flee.

He moved towards Sakura. Her movements became partially obscured by a thin shield of men fighting one of the Uchiha, and then she seemed to fall through them, bashing the knee of one as she went. Two men, double-wielding spears, appeared in his way. His pace was such that he grabbed one of the men with his bare hand and pulled him towards himself; a lash of the other hand had the Kazekage wrapping one arm around the man, and tossing him into a web of his shuffling comrades. Sakura was nowhere to be found. He looked left, right. Behind. Even above. Still nowhere. Still lost. _'Come back. Show me where you are.' _

As though commanded by gods, she appeared in his vision that very moment, charging forward. Another bandit blocked his view of her expression in battle. He exacted some punishment on the man for ruining such a perfect moment of art, but could not bring himself to recall exactly what was done. The man was removed, and his path to Sakura and whatever enemy she fought was now clear. And indeed, she fought a beast.

He stood over an enemy smaller than he, and brighter. The beast himself was not so much a beast for his size-great though that was- but for the marks on his skin and the darkness in the rest of him, for his absurd eyes with too much black and the cloth covering too much of his face, and the aura of not-quite-human that was around him.

He held a sword, a great and heavy one, that pushed down against a young woman's average katana as she attempted to slice upward. The young woman was yelling at him. He could have listened, learned. But the being his eyes and hands sought compelled him too strongly: he would not stand and watch. This man would die for hurting her.

Sasori moved, and when he moved, men fled. So it was again.

Sakura suddenly heaved against her sword and the man staggered back a step. Her shouting at him had quieted; Sasori was now halfway to them. He raised an arm to shoulder-height as Sakura's leg lifted and kicked the man in the stomach. She would have succeeded had his arm not raised and taken the hit. His eyes betrayed no smile at having blocked the blow. Sasori did not wait and watch to see if they betrayed anything. He was upon him, and called out the only thing that mattered: "Sakura, move!"

At first he thought she obeyed, but saw within the same heartbeat of time that the man had grabbed her shoulder in one hand and was tossing her away. His eyes nearly followed her—she was thrown the length of four men away…more!—but did not dare leave this enemy unwatched. The Kazekage's arms were ready, both sets of fingers now drawn together to make two drill-like shapes. The man turned sideways slightly and looked like he was about to tear them out of the air. Sasori dropped and kicked the man in the side of the knee.

He should have fallen, or moved at least. The man grunted, and his brow crinkled in a semblance of pain. Then they rose: he was intrigued. His position warped immediately and he lashed out at both Sasori's leg and the Kazekage's long arms at once. The arms retracted and his leg had swung back by the time the man's fist hit the ground. Their arms and hands met. Slammed. The puppet's arms jabbed holes in the man's skin and he hardly cared. At last he had to resort to opening the poison pocket in the left knuckles.

The man halted a moment to cough, weakened, and that was when the samurai girl returned. There was no flash of color to alert him this time. She appeared from his left with a closed and brandished fist, whipping hair and eyes like perfect flames. Foolish, entranced, he spent that heartbeat watching her pass him in her battle stance, and the next watching the man jump away, and feeling the ground shake as Sakura's fist struck it.

Men around them cursed and yelled and Sakura's fine hair fell flat around her head again. Cracks spread wildly out around the ground from the impact point of her fist in the absolute asymmetry of nature. What perfection. What animals these men were to try and harm this.

The dark giant of a man raised his voice, "Make a circle about us!" and spread his arms slightly.

Strings burst out from the scars on his wrists, ugly, black strings that writhed. _"Kami-_sama, what a hideous puppeteer," he spat.

"He's not a puppeteer." Sakura told him as she stood up. "Look at him more closely. It's…it's uglier than that." He looked, unwillingly watched the man's strings writhe and grow and grow some more. They grew like live things. Whipped weakly about him like worms. But they couldn't be.

He'd occasionally had nightmares similar to this. Would she think him foolish for suggesting it? "They are tentacles, then?"

He noticed that she didn't twitch, but swayed the slightest bit. "Yes. They're fast as—"

"I'm sick and tired of trying to make you roll onto your back," rumbled the man; his voice carried. His men finished making their circle, and now he, Sakura and Sasori stood in their own pocket of space whilst fighting and yelling went on outside it. "I will not waste my effort doing the same for your new comrades. If you're worthy, stop stalling!"

"I'm ready at any time, you monster!" Sakura screeched back. "Try. Just try again!" Her hands tightened and her fingers clenched, eager for fighting as her fists. "I'll pull out your tongue this time."

Sasori stood and readied his weaponry again. The man charged and all his monstrous appendages were with him. He took a step in front of her, and his ears were assaulted before anything else, with a fierce and rough, "Noo!" from behind. Both their heads instinctively twitched in that direction and Sakura gasped before dashing to the side. A blur the color of fire sped between them and met the behemoth man. They collided hard and the tentacles whipped harshly against the ground. Both parties were shoved back a short distance.

The blur rose, stood, and by the blonde hair it could only be Naruto. He shook for a brief second before charging the man again, faster. The black appendages thrust towards him and tangled on a spot of ground a spear's length from his leg. Naruto reached his opponent and clawed him across the face. The enemy's roar of pain shook his comrades and silenced them.

Naruto's whole body shook like a disrupted current. "Shut your mouth!" he screamed, and the noise seemed to dim even Hidan's far-off and zealous screaming. "You monster. Monster."

Now something showed in his eyes, and this time Sasori could examine it. It was puzzlement, no doubt, completely overshadowing the torn cloth on his face and the blood leaking through it. "Monster?" he repeated slowly. A tentacle slid out of his mouth. It was joined by another and another and they swirled together like tangled hairs. "Mmm. I see. Sakura has gone and found her own monsters, hasn't she? As though she wasn't enough of an animal herself, ox that she is."

"You say her name again." Naruto whispered. "I'll eat out your eyes."

The man's eyes showed pleasure at this. "Come then, boy. Eat out my eyes. Just like a monster."

The ground shook, and for a moment, the puppeteer harbored the thought that Naruto was somehow moving the ground. He was thankfully removed from such idiotic thoughts when a tower of fire taller than a man erupted from the ground, hardly two stone throws outside their circle of fighting space. Men yelled around it and Hidan's distinct cursing could be heard nearby. Smoke flew in all directions and Sakura to immediate coughing. Their opponent still hardly wavered. How curious that nothing short of a full-front attack to his face could get a reaction from him. Smoke began swirling low, and new smoke was birthed, creating a shield that became thicker and darker. Their enemy's body was finally obscured, and Naruto jumped away, back to them, a foot or so away from backing into their faces.

Logic dictated that he be grateful. Knowledge insisted that he keep watch. Sasori carefully took hold of Sakura's right arm and kept his eyes on Naruto's back. "Come. We must get to your villagers." He saw a frantic nod of a her head and needed nothing else. They turned around towards the village, knowing the other samurai would come to the same conclusion. The Kazekage floated behind him, next to a silent Naruto.

'_Eerie brat. Jumping between playful and animalistic is no great challenge for you, it seems.' _The only reply to this thought was the false samurai behind him keeping up a brooding but perhaps wise silence.

They had gone all of twenty-five feet when the dark man called to them, "You think this is it?" called the dark man. "I don't recall excusing you." A _swhhh _in the air signified all to clearly that he had sent out his appendages again. Sakura and Naruto had ducked already, and Sakura was now on her back looking in his direction again. Sasori pulled at her wrist to get her up, to keep her attention on safety and on him. The smoke was getting fainter and more useless as cover the farther they got from it. Though enemies were thinner over here, they could also see better, and started converging and shouting.

A spear flew over Naruto's head, and he caught a second in his hand. "Try to hurt us again! Try!" Three more tried and thanks to handiwork with the Kazekage, they were all successfully deflected. There were hardly any bandits left in this area to run at them, save for a line of them some thirty feet ahead, directly blocking the straight run to Konoha. A twitch of his wrist, left, up, and the Kazekage's lashing arm slit an opening in the men for the samurai to burst through. Projectiles stuck in the ground behind them, and someone cursed. Spears and tentacles and whatever else this carnival of an army had to offer were closing in quickly behind.

Naruto jumped slightly and landed a hard kick in the abdomen to one of the men in the line blocking their way. Three thrust their spears, and two made successful stabs. One of them speared the back of Sakura's thigh. Sasori's too-careful eye saw her mouth convulse and she let her pain out only as a choked gasp. His too-careful ears heard the tiny sound of blood spurting.

"Got the wench!"

"Again, Fudo!"

Fudo howled and struck again, but Naruto whirled back and elbowed the man flat in the neck. There was now a perfect gap in the bandits for them to burst through, and so they did. "You idiot!" they heard. "Accursed idiot! What have you don—" The latter half of the word "done" was punctuated by a harsh and gurgling noise that reminded them all of impalement.

Two men burst from cover of their comrades and made as if to grab Sakura with hands gloved in metal. Naruto was there before he could be, again, this time with his own sword. One of the two attackers' arm was hacked clean off. His blood spurted like a weak fountain and his screams assailed their ears. Another appeared out of seemingly nowhere and cut a gash in Naruto's side with a spiked gauntlet, and then disappeared. They moved on with Naruto groaning at their side. They ran on land free of bandits now, so close to Konoha's little arch of a gateway that he could see the villagers standing by it and staring at them.

Sakura sped up, but he continued to hold her wrist and guide her, more aware than she of her running on a leg with half strength. A voice from back in the crowd of enemies yelled, "A crab's claw! Now!" and Sasori's ears recognized the voice. He did not need to turn his head to know it was the sly-faced man with spectacles. He turned his head anyway to see the new attackers who were coming at them in what surely would be a pincer formation.

Two were closing in on the left and Naruto was veering purposefully towards them. Sasori could not help but watch and see if the boy would change again. Attack like a samurai, or an animal, or both.

"Sasori!" Sakura screeched.

He pulled the Kazekage's arm towards them both instinctively to protect them, but as he turned Sakura's sword clashed with a man wielding an axe, and pushed him back.

She turned her leg to move her body to the side and skid to a stop, and he copied her moves. The man came up to them again, terribly fast for a wielder of something so heavy. Sakura gasped and readied her sword again, but this time he made sure to be faster than her. The Kazekage landed hard in front of them, hardly large enough to stand before two crouching people, and took the force of the man's tackle. Villagers cried out and exclaimed not far behind them.

Even before she did, he knew she was going to attempt to move around the safety of the Kazekage and attack the man, but he held her with his eyes. _'Kami-sama, freeze this moment. Let it stay.' _And by the grace of some force or other, it felt as though he watched her eyes, watched emotions swimming in her, for more than the one second that he actually did. The bandit seemed to be waiting for them behind the puppet during that indefinite time, but he could damn well stay there. Here was his first moment alone with Sakura, genuine and perfect, and if he had to assault men with axes and black souls to have time with her, then yes, yes, he'd do it. But now…

"Allow me to save you this time," he said. He got a second smile in return, one that ignited a noticeable flare in his belly.

He would have delighted in seeing what or who moved next but was suddenly and unpleasantly interrupted by another slam against the Kazekage, one so harsh it moved the puppet itself. The back of its shoulder clunked into Sakura's forehead. He touched his left hand to her head instantly and felt for a bruise, but saw nothing but a touch of embarrassment on her face. This moment had to be saved, too. How sweet she looked. How unfortunate he had to watch her emotions and actions while people were throwing axes at them.

"Too proud to thank me. What else is new, danna?" Deidara, of course. Ruining everything that could be ruined. And now Sakura was curious, no, happy, that he had escaped the horde and was here with them.

"Deidara!" she said. She stood up and looked at him over both the Kazekage's head, and the man leaning against it that Deidara had killed.

Deidara was equally happy to see her. "I thought danna had gotten you out. Hell, if I had been wrong, I would have gone back to—"

"Sakura-chaaan!"

Like lightning, Naruto appeared and engulfed Sakura in an embrace that took her an inch of two off the ground. Any moment, surely Sakura would think his body too uncomfortably hot from his last several minutes of exertion, or bloody from the tears and wounds on him, or undesirable otherwise. It occurred to him that it wouldn't do to tear her out of the boy's arms—satisfying, feasible…but a crowd of innocents was watching—so he opted instead to make note of the obvious, which the blonde tended to miss. "Naruto. Naruto, she can hardly breathe."

The blonde lifted his head from Sakura's hairline and smiled a soft, content smile. "I didn't come here to please you, and I'm not going to try." He said. "I came for Sakura-chan. That's all."

A smooth and concise rebuttal. Fuck him.

In between them and the crowd, both the Uchiha were coming towards them, Madara much more slowly and languidly, and like a few hours back, missing one of his gauntlets. Behind them, the bandits were now collectively facing the samurai and the village. The ones on the edges of the group returned so that they were a tight, dense force again, but instead of charging, they stared and looked furious and hateful. They ground their teeth and the grey-haired one took his glasses off. Sasori felt no victory.

The Uchiha came to the group and the little brat was only just letting Sakura down. Sasori silently fumed when he still kept his hands on her arms. "Naruto-kun, we're safe now. You can let her be," suggested the elder Uchiha. And he managed to sound friendly about it. Naruto had disregarded Madara for about one second when the young woman in his arms pulled his hands off. His shock and sorrow at the sudden move made Sasori grin.

"Move. Move! Tsunade-sensei is still there!" she gasped.

The younger Uchiha made as if to go back and stopped with his hand on his sword. He heard a noise, as they all did: a howl. An unfortunately familiar one. Most of them had heard it when Hidan disemboweled a man in the street in Tanzaku. They heard it again, more whooping, when a faction of bandits more towards the middle of the crowd were shoved aside, and Hidan's massive three-bladed scythe appeared over the men's heads.

It slammed down with a yell that was very clearly not Hidan's, but a woman's. Sakura murmured, "No. No." and started walking forward.

"Don't you trust your sensei to escape on her own?" asked Sasuke, and she stopped. "Let her come. She will come out with Hidan."

"Mmm. If she is _your _mentor, I'm confident in that, too." Madara added almost happily.

He'd thought that logic always seemed to appeal to Sakura, but she looked very much like she was a hair's breadth away from running towards waiting enemies. "Ten seconds, that's all. Then I'm going, no matter who stays or goes with me." She decided. She turned around, and found five men intensely watching her. Whatever she had meant to add whilst looking at them all was seemingly forgotten, and she turned around again.

Sasori looked at them all, too, and found he was the only one observing opponents instead of the prize. Strange, childish Naruto watched her like an animal—what happened to him? What was wrong?—Deidara and Madara wore similar, unreadable smiles, and Sasuke had nothing but a touch of softness in his usual…lack of visible emotion. Ten seconds. The gods only knew what she could do by letting them all look at her, panting and angry, for ten seconds.

The time had gone, and all they had seen was the scythe rising and falling again. Sasori got up from his crouch, raised the Kazekage on its chakra strings, and released the great iron spikes on its forearms.

"I'm getting very tired of this," he said. The other men saw his glare sweep over them all and knew what he was talking about. "I'll go with you, Sakura. Come!"

She had said "yes," and they had both taken a single step, when Hidan's scythe appeared again. This time it didn't go up and then down, but was thrown so far to the side that it landed out of the bandit crowd. A giant rope attached to the bottom of its shaft was pulled taught, and then it tugged a man out of the crowd to be impaled on the waiting weapon. Deidara muttered something like "yechh," at the sight of the gore. Sakura went forward again.

She stopped when a long-legged man in brown robes started running along the edges of the dense group, and every stride or two men came out of the dense group to form a border along it. Each of these outside men pointed their weapon inward at their comrades, as though to keep them from getting out.

"Bastards." Sakura spat and started forward again.

As she and Sasori ran—and whoever else had chosen to follow behind them—one of the men in the border of the bandit line was pushed onto his back. Another took his place and clashed swords with someone the samurai could not see. The new guardsman stabbed forward, twice, and then he looked skyward, and so did the samurai.

A figure in a green _yukata _had jumped up slightly higher than the man's head, and their foot slammed down onto the guardsman's shoulder. The man slammed into the ground with a sound like thunder. This person had physical power that could rival Sakura's.

The figure in green dashed between the guards at the victim's side, running straight for the village. Eight men, all armed with either axes or massive, curved swords, sped after her. Sakura gasped with delight, and once again started towards the bandits, this time running almost too fast for the puppeteer to keep pace.

"Tsunade-sensei!" she cried.

Sasori squinted a bit to see the woman: blonde and perhaps thirty years of age, holding an old-looking katana and carrying an expensive, gold-tipped sheath on her _obi. _She, too, looked delighted to see her student, but her eyes traveled to Sasori himself, to the Kazekage, and then her expression only brightened. The female samurai, happy to have finally found soldiers.

The eight men were close now. From his left, Sasuke whisked on a sharply curved path to the two men nearest to Tsunade, and he clashed swords with the larger of them. Another was terribly close to Sasori. He raised one hand and prepared to have the Kazekage's armblades cut him through. The puppet's arms were perhaps a foot from the man's torso when he suddenly wasn't there anymore. Instinct told him the enemy would then appear from behind, so he slammed the puppet's hand down to protect his back.

The attacker came from the side, but his puppet's blade was in nearly the perfect position to protect him from such an assault. His foreign-looking sword slid along the armblade and he jumped back. Sasori rose slowly and took the new enemy in: curiously old, if his skin was any judge, and wearing a dark robe that covered only part of his torso and tapered to a point behind his head. Konoha's attackers were a carnival indeed.

A club hit the redhead in the side, and the pain rattled through most of his body. He staggered and dashed to the side to avoid another strike from the unseen attacker (who shouted, "The fuck is this, a doll?"). Uncultured pig. His weapons were not dolls. A blade through his spine would teach him so, he decided.

As sudden as the club strike, an enormous red blur suddenly overwhelmed the vulgar man with the club, and pulled him away. As he and the wide-eyed old man watched, they saw it was Hidan's scythe, pulled back by the rope on the bottom, and pulled by Hidan himself. His robe hung on just one shoulder, and three scars like an animal's paw hung down the front of his shoulder. He looked for all the world like he'd just climaxed.

He ran towards Sasori still with this expression; he heard the old half-robe bandit curse and flee. He started laughing, "Man, I just got—" but Sasori cut him off with, "Shut up and go back there," and gestured to the area where the samurai had been standing before. "Yah, okay!" Hidan said, and jogged gaily off.

'_What's happened to him, now? The same thing that happened to Naruto, perhaps. Perhaps they're both merely insane.' _

"Hey! Hey, we're going back!" Deidara called to him from nearby. Sasori looked and found all eight bandits were now merely eight bodies, save for one of the smaller ones that had a knife in its back. Madara was making a missile out of by throwing it as close to the bandit group as he could. Sasori watched his movement and the flex of his muscles as he threw, and determined provoking Madara physically would never be wise.

"That knife is mine, but you can have it!" Madara shouted, grinning, and then ran with the others towards Konoha again. Again, Sasori saw, the bandits remained in their dense pack and wouldn't come forward. The bespectacled boy and the man filled with tentacles were nowhere to be seen.

Sakura was freshly panting, and she now completely favored her injured leg. She pivoted a little on the good one and shouted at the bandit crowd, "Chojuro, if I see your face again, I'm taking whatever's left of your ribs back home with me!" Someone from within the bandit group may or may not have hissed something back at her.

Madara approached her, putting a hand on her shoulder and leaning down a bit as though preparing to whisper a secret. Sasori openly stared, his eyes on Madara's. Hidan had claimed his eyes looked like a rat's blood for a reason. If Naruto was an animal, what was he? How much of an Uchiha was he on the inside?

He was just far enough away that he could not hear what the red-eyed man said to her, save for the word, "know." After this comment, Sakura looked up to meet his eyes and appeared to regret it, lowering her eyes and looking over her shoulder instead while muttering something that was probably off-topic.

'_Even she finds his eyes unsettling.' _The puppeteer noted. As he did, he saw the bandits turning around and moving away. The formation they'd had when they'd first headed towards the village was gone. Now they walked in a senseless, tight jumble. They stepped carelessly over any bodies and picked them clean of weapons as they went. _'It's as though they're quitting a game. Is this truly it? This can't be the last of them.' _

Sakura turned around and started back towards the village. It looked like she was tolerating Madara's hand on her shoulder; it was hard to tell from looking if he was helping her walk or if she was purposefully leaning onto him for that. She waved weakly to Sasori as she passed by. Madara looked far too delighted to be near her, and this he would not stand for. He twirled one hand in a long, convoluted motion; the Kazekage began folding in on itself; the arms were sucked into increasingly larger cylinders and the body shrunk. Within seconds it was once again a black satchel on his back.

Sasori took a spot walking next to Sakura and the red-eyed Uchiha and asked, "Do you know if they'll return? I feel that our jobs can't be over with just one battle, however successful."

"No, they'll be back, certainly. Not tonight or even the day after, but the night after that, they'll be ready." She elaborated, and as she did, her sensei fell into step with them as well, on Madara's right. "Normally it takes only one day, but after a victory like that, I'm very confident that we'll have that long to rest."

"Why, I'd fight them again if they came back in an hour!" Madara boasted. Whether it was meant to be comical was hard to guess. "But _you_ shouldn't, if it came to that, I think. Let's have someone bandage your leg up, hm?" The Uchiha kissed the top of her head, tickling her forehead with strands of his hair.

Lightning may well have struck him; Sasori would not have noticed. _'You arrogant, childish little shit.' _He thought. Madara was sprawling himself over Sakura's fine form like ink spilling over a perfect ink painting. Staining her. He would probably try and would make gestures like this again, but he wouldn't succeed in taking the samurai woman's attention. No, she would never take to a monstrous rat like him. '_Hidan was right about you and your eyes. You're an opportunistic _rat._' _

"I think this is the part where you remove your claws and let her be with her fellow villagers," commented Deidara from in front of them. It made Sasori suddenly furious that the phoenix painted on the back of his cloak had not the faintest cut or bloodstain.

Madara pretended to contemplate. "Well, I think—"

Sakura planted a foot on the ground and stopped Madara from walking forward. "Well, _I _think Konoha's saviors should go on without me." She stated. No one walked without her. The villagers, standing around the archway hardly twenty feet away, openly stared. Sakura looked at them all evenly and bowed once. "Samurai-san, you are all defenders of my home. My villagers must now look at you and know you, not me. So please, go first."

At the very back, Hidan started off with, "Okay, seriously—" but was cut off by Sasuke, who said firmly, "Don't you think we've had enough struggling for today? Do what she says." The silver-haired man scoffed but did just that, pushing past Sasori and walking with Deidara under Konoha's little archway. Madara, Naruto and Sasori came next.

Sasori could not help but smile a bit. His crossing underneath the villager's marker meant that he had officially made his entrance as the defender of Konoha, and that Sakura had officially succeeded in bringing him. Konoha knew he was here to stay, and soon, so would she.

666

April 3rd, late afternoon, within sight of Konoha

666

Dozens of commoners clapped, cried out and bowed. He could not help but notice that for peasant folk, their clothes were of fair quality of a range of colors greater than the common, cheap grey cloth, and they certainly did not appear starved. Sakura hailed from a good, strong village of capable people. Was she born here, and were her parents here? What kinds of things did she own? What was it like to wake early enough to see the sunrise here, as she had claimed to do so often? A great many more questions plagued him about her. Questions, questions. Answers came so slowly and patience had always been more Itachi's virtue.

Now, he stood next to her, watching Naruto and Sasori go through the meek-looking archway and have their impressive scars and curious clothing stared at by the villagers. Now, he could see the breeze gently touching her hair in the corner of his eye. He could hear a good fraction of her strength had been sapped by the way she breathed. Now, Sasuke had an opportunity.

"I realize I told you this just this morning, but I apologize for my foolish uncle." He told her softly. "He makes a hobby out of invading others' personal space."

Sakura laughed. The sound made him almost sick with pleasure. "I'm not new to people getting in my face. Besides, he's more funny than anything else."

He risked making himself look like a weak copy of Madara, but he took the chance anyway. He had to. Sasuke held out his hand to her. There were a few spots of blood on the palm. "Would you like to walk through the arch together? I'm not fond of being the sole object of people's attention. And for your part," he made sure she understood he was glaring at his uncle, "I think I'm clearly the lesser of two evils."

She watched his hand for a moment, wondering like an animal before bait. Rather slowly, she slipped her hand into his. She was tense at doing this, he felt in her pose. Tense and so very soft and pure. "If that's the way you're putting it, then I agree."

They walked through hand in hand, and now the inquisitive eyes of many villagers flocked from the other samurai to him and Sakura. And once they'd walked the small distance to stand by the others, he tightened his hand over hers slightly. She could go be with her sensei in another minute.

Speaking of the sensei, she now stood cross-armed a few steps in front of the great semicircle of villagers surrounding them. She inhaled excitedly and said, "_Minna-_sama, I am Tsunade, unofficial guardian of Konoha. I and everyone here welcome you, and thank you." Here Sakura looked up gratefully at Sasuke while loosening her hand from his. He nodded and let her go.

She went over to her sensei and joined her and the villagers' collective bow. It was not particularly coordinated but was accompanied by plenty of tears. Once they'd risen again, a few of the villagers appeared to gather some courage and spoke out directly to the samurai.

"Samurai-sama," started one man, perhaps his father's age. He was addressing Sasori. "I…I wonder about the device you used in battle. Might I ask about it?"

Naruto inclined his head to him. "You don't have to talk to us like nobles, 'kay? I dunno about Sasuke-teme, 'cause he actually is one, but most of us don't care. Don't be scared."

This appeared to soften and incite wonder in many villagers' faces. The man swallowed and looked at the redhead again. "Well, I just wondered…where it went. Did the bandits steal it from you?"

Sasori looked quite amused. From where the man stood, it seemed that he couldn't see the black satchel on the samurai's back. Instead of turning to let him see it, he raised his arms and pointed his hands at his back. The puppet's arms shot out from within the cloth covering, making many villagers gasp and step back. Sasuke watched with nearly equal interest as Sasori's puppet seemed to fold outward from his back till it was not quite as big as he was, and floated above his head like a human cloud.

"Magic!"

"It hasn't got strings! Not a single string!"

"It's not magic, I assure you," said the puppeteer. "It is a secret, though. Unfortunately, the only ones who will learn it are the bandits of yours I'll kill."

A little girl appeared, peeking out from behind her mother's legs. "You're really gonna make them go away?"

Madara put a hand brazenly on his chest. "I certainly will, young lady. I'll have to sharpen my sword first, since the ones I just took down made it dull with their fat heads." The girl tugged on her sleeve and giggled at him. Sasuke internally curled his lip at his uncle. No matter how many children thought him amusing and delightful, he never liked the sight.

"Can I just, like, thank you for saving' my ass, lady?" Hidan asked. He was looking at Tsunade. "Also, female samurai are just fine in my book. Even if I didn't know your apprentice, you _breaking _that guy's neck to get the guy with the axe off my back—that was the shit. Oh, yeah, I'm Hidan. Since you asked before."

"Well, we're all here for the same purpose, Hidan, so you're welcome." She replied with her hands on her hips, then raised her voice a bit. "Samurai, I hope Sakura hasn't ruined the surprise for you. We've been gathering some special things for you ever since Sakura sent us a letter saying she'd found her first samurai, Deidara-san….may I ask which of you is Deidara?"

Deidara raised his hand proudly and Sasuke internally curled his lip again. A hundred children could call Madara their hero, if this over-proud fool would just disappear. Shock blossomed on the samurai woman's face and she stuttered before adding, "Ah, yes. I shall know all your names very soon…the surprise is in fact a banquet we're holding in your honor, in the honor of Konoha's saviors. Within the hour, you'll have every delicacy to be had in this village at your fingertips!"

"Will there be ramen?" asked Naruto excitedly.

"Hmmm, shall there be, Ayame?" Tsunade queried, looking to a brunette maiden standing in the crowd some ten feet away. The girl nodded intensely and whisked away deeper into the crowd, perhaps to prepare it. Naruto was exclaiming happily as she left and letting every man, woman, child and blade of grass for a mile know how excited he was to soon eat ramen. Other villagers began smiling and laughing as well. _'Overexcitement can beget death, you blathering idiot. One day you might learn that.' _

Suddenly his eye was attracted to Sakura again, who was having a quick word with her sensei, and receiving a bandage to put on her leg. Her face was joyful, and her hands moved slightly in nervousness. He caught the phrase, "I'm so proud of you," which made the young woman blossom with pride. Sasuke ached to hold her again, hold more than her hand. Would she accept that?

Just as suddenly, Sakura started and gasped, "Oh! Oh, everyone, don't leave just yet!" The villagers who had been trickling away to work on the banquet stopped and looked back. "I'd like you all to see something. I'd like Ino to meet Deidara_ Minna-san, _where's Ino? Did she go already?" After a moment's pause, villagers began tossing agreeing, even excited comments, and calling for a person named Ino.

Sakura went up to Deidara and respectfully held out her hand. "Will you come with me? I'd really like you to meet her."

"Of course," he replied, and took the same hand that Sasuke had held not five minutes ago. Immediately he stormed after them and walked just behind them. When the blonde looked over his shoulder and sent a cocky smirk at any potential followers, Sasuke was the first to receive it. He kept any growing rage in an unseen pocket of himself. There was no need to show Deidara how this made him feel. He knew.

The three of them—or perhaps more, he didn't look back to see who else was following—walked through an opening in the crowd and around the side of the cottage nearest to the Konoha arch, in the direct opposite direction of the arch. They had passed only five homes, all within a hundred or so feet of each other, and then Sakura guided them down a fairly steep hill. At the bottom the land spread out for a mile or more of nothing but farmland, dotted everywhere with colorful crops and the occasional shadow of a cloud. It was cut through by straight, plowed paths, and a bending creek no wider than a man's body. On the far side of this land many more houses could be seen, perhaps twenty black dots on the edge of the horizon, and many shaded by trees.

"I see her. She's halfway down the salamander path." Sakura said breathlessly. When Deidara made a questioning noise, she elaborated, "Every path through the farming area has a name. See, she's on the second one. Oh, oh, close your eyes!" Deidara did so immediately.

"Why's he got to close his eyes, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked. But Sasuke had looked on the salamander path, and seen a girl in a violet kimono, and knew why.

"You'll see, just wait for it. Deidara, there's no rocks or anything, so you needn't worry about tripping over something." She said quickly, and then cupped a hand over her mouth and called, "Ino! Ino, I said not to go yet, you idiot!" The samurai reached the bottom of the hill and started down the salamander path towards Ino, who turned to them.

"Well, excuse me for wanting to do my part, Miss—ye—Sakura, what—" But Sakura only grinned and looked at each of her samurai to see their reactions. Most of them probably had a similar face to Sasuke's. He didn't bother looking. He looked at Ino, a tall blonde Sakura's age, carrying a pot full of lilies. She stared wide-eyed at Deidara.

Sakura released Deidara's hand, and now everyone watched him. "All right, now you can look." Deidara opened his only eye, and then he, too was speechless. He and Ino looked like perfect siblings, as similar as he and Itachi, as similar as a man and a woman could be without wearing the same clothes. Even their goddamned _hairstyle _was exactly the same, except for hair covering opposite eyes.

"I—nn—" The blonde tried to find words but struggled. Verbally defeated by a peasant girl with a flowerpot. "Hello. I'm here to protect your village, un." Ino bowed to him, respectful as was required, except for keeping her wide eyes on his every second.

"They're fucking _twins_!" Hidan scoffed. "Are you guys sure you aren't long-lost siblings or something? You both know who your parents are?"

"My parents lived here all their lives." Ino said slowly. "I'm, I'm only…"

"We can talk about how similar you are when the banquet starts." Sakura supplied them. "We can all go there now. At the end of the path and in the center of all the homes is our gathering place. We'll be eating there soon." She pointed down the path to where the majority of the village homes were.

She took a step in that direction, and as she walked, she looked over her shoulder. Sasuke instinctively took a step toward her, to be nearer, to feel the warmth and joy she was suddenly radiating. "I'm very grateful you're all here. Your kindness is going to help save us."

It occurred to him then that both Sasori and Madara were not here. They were still up the hill by the gate and the first few homes, talking with either Tsunade or the villagers that remained there. Sasuke could see villagers walking towards the gathering place on paths parallel to theirs, jogging and the younger ones even bouncing. They had probably not felt such safety and hope for weeks, but he felt the brightness of this one girl far more than anyone else. The other three were probably glaring daggers at him right now, but he could have cared far less.

He started walking after her. "Your village is indeed safe now. We'll protect it, and you."

For a heartbeat it seemed the significance of those words was lost on her, but then the recognition appeared in her eyes. Now she knew, guessed at the least. He held out a hand again, and this time she didn't watch it like an animal before bait, but like he didn't know what it was at all. "I've often been my own protection," she said carefully. Sasuke could all but hear plucky Hidan drinking in this sight.

"And now that you have help, you assume you'll never need it?" It was rather like something he would do himself. "Don't be foolish. You're precious, and I'll protect you."

Now his hand was stared at like a venomous snake. The girl's mouth parted as she made noises suggesting she was trying to reply. Her hand was very distinctly being held closer to her side than necessary. She wouldn't come to him. He told her outright how he felt, and now she wouldn't come.

His hand moved down, perhaps an inch, and then hers moved up. He stopped the motion of his and opened it to welcome hers again. The tips of her fingers touched his, and even if she did not twitch back at the feel of it, she must have felt as much of a spark as he. He closed his fingers around the top of her hand and let the conjoined pieces of them fall. They walked hand in hand again and this time Sakura very much understood why he wanted it.

Hidan made a "pssst" noise behind them. "Ino. Ino. That's Sasuke, another one of your village's samurai. He is a thieving little dick."

666

Well, that was only three pages longer than I intended. Not that I think you'll be complaining about it. Well! At least I managed to finish this chapter before my Christmas break ended. I had hopes of finishing it a little before midnight on New Year's. I posted the first chapter of this story in the last five minutes of 2009, if you didn't know, and I wished I could perform a similar feat for this chapter, but I couldn't do it…on the upside, I made it quite long. And managed to include a segment from Sasuke's POV, who's as lovesick as a little boy with a first crush but managed to smoothly profess his attraction to Sakura. I only changed to his POV on the last third or so because I wanted to have that scene where he asks to enter Konoha whilst holding her hand. Ahhh~

What did you learn in this chapter? Some stuff about Sasori, certainly, though I did not manage to hint about his past, as I had meant to in the beginning. He's hella observant, for one, dislikes ugly things (okay, that was more implied than said) and has a tiny little obsession with watching Sakura move, not even big, impressive movements, either, but the way she walks and moves her hands, little things that only a sophisticated and slightly pompous fellow like him would notice. Oh, and did you notice how he got burned by Naruto? Ouchhh. (Also, not as important, but did any of you realize that Hidan was acting quite happy and almost kind? He gets like that after a good, satisfying kill. So it is in Seven's canon! Also I made Danzo into a bandit just for the lulz.)

I really wanted to have a scene where the villagers basically bombard the samurai with praise and questions, and Sakura and Tsunade stand off to the side, and Tsunade commends Sakura for finding six incredibly attractive samurai, as well as inquire as to their behavior around her. She was still fighting bandits and didn't see this happen, but villagers have passed on the news to her and Tsunade's quite interested in anyone who tries to embrace and kiss Sakura. Now, whether she'll react positively or negatively to that is yet to be seen.

I also wanted certain villagers, and certain groups of villagers, to show interest in certain samurai. Guess I'll just insert those things next chapter. I will tell you that Tsunade and Madara will hit it off and become buds, Lee will appear and be Naruto's sparring pal, Naruto will take a platonic (Pla. To. Nic.) liking to Hinata, and half-villager-half-samurai Kakashi will appear and firmly plant himself as Sakura's substitute father figure.

Considering the stuff I've got planned for this story, no, none of that information is a spoiler. Next chapter will be a lot of "interaction" with little to no bandit influence, so it'll be a fun one!

Ta…Storm.


	6. Blessing

**OMFGVNEROIGHNWSKGJBLAH ! EVERYONE LOOK AT THIS! **

Did my spaz catch your attention? Good. I'd like to bring your attention now over to a Naruto OVA that recently was released online. Synced with a new song from Aqua Timez, it's basically a six-minute "What would happen if there was a 'Naruto VS. Sasuke' fight as of the most recent manga chapter?" It's complete with a very kickass fight scene and the unavoidable, adorable and nostalgic flashbacks of their kid days. You should totally watch it. Even though it demotes Sakura to nothing but an obligatory crybaby.

http:(slash)(slash)www(dot)youtube(dot)com(slash)watch?v(equals)n5rjqByHatI

In relation to this actual story, I hope that you read the last chapter! As the previous note states, it was posted incomplete, and then I replaced that with the complete version which was three times as long and since you don't get an alert in your mailbox from me just replacing content, I can't be sure if everyone read the last chapter, because they didn't know that the new content was there.

Well, I hope this doesn't count as spoilers. **If you didn't read the new version of last chapter,** basically it amounts to Sakura and her samurai fighting their way out of the bandit crowd, and once they make it through, the bandits as a whole walk away to recharge/rest. The villagers delightfully welcome their new protectors and announce they will be having a feast in their honor in a couple hours. Sakura, Naruto, Deidara and Sasuke run through part of the village because Sakura wants to show Deidara something, which it turns out is Ino, and the two of course stare at each other. Then Sasuke asks to hold Sakura's hand as they walk over to where the feast will be held. Sakura warily allows this, and Hidan quietly bitches at Sasuke for doing that.

Oh, and for your Japanese lesson today, we have _yukata, _which I'm pretty sure is a coat of sorts. I think that green thing Tsunade wears over her shirt counts as one. Also there is _sugoi, _which is a generic exclamation of "Wow" or "That's so cool!" and also the ever-popular _baka. _Don't tell me I have to define that for you.

666

April 3rd, approaching evening, within Konoha.

666

The sun was going down, but it shone on Konoha now—the light of all the gods shone on Konoha now. Both she and Sakura could read the futility in each other's eyes when she first suggested to her apprentice that they couldn't continue to propel the bandits on their own, and they ought to try to go search for help. Sakura had strongly protested at first. She believed she was the guardian of this village, and could not accept the implication that she was failing at her duty. Tsunade smiled at such unmoving, almost naïve behavior, but then again, Sakura was a capable guardian indeed, not to be laughed at.

And she had brought home others just like her. What luck. What incredible, _incredible _luck. Sometime soon she'd have to drag her apprentice to a quiet place to talk about how she found them. Looking them all together, she decided they earned a place among her personal list of strange sights—and she'd borne witness to many. Hundred-sided dice, horned, howling monsters from across the sea, a man living with a hole in his head, and Jiraiya.

However, these men would still have a high place on this list. She had just seen the redheaded samurai make a human-sized puppet appear from the dog-sized satchel on his back and float above his head; met Sakura's first samurai, Deidara, a _perfect copy _of her friend Ino; had an internal and incredible suspicion about the two dark-haired men in the party; watched the one in priest's robes not-quite-covertly lick blood off his hand; and then watched the animalistic blonde jump for joy when he heard that there would be ramen at the feast honoring their arrival. Well, apparently among Konoha's protectors were such rarities as a sorcerer, a long-lost twin, a complete child, and the gods only knew what else.

From the corner of her eye, she saw her apprentice sneak away from the dark-haired one's side and creep along the crowd of her villagers till she was at Tsunade's side. Sakura smiled her brilliant smile, and her bright eyes waited to drink the oncoming praise. Tsunade smiled back, but first took a roll of cloth bandages from the pocket of her _yukata _and handed it to Sakura. She blinked in what may have been surprise and then took off a section to put on her bleeding leg.

"Well—I think this is the turning point for Konoha," Sakura began to say.

"I'm very proud of you," the blonde said.

Sakura inhaled slightly, as though absorbing the praise, and then replied, "Thank you, Tsunade-sama." Her eyes flicked back to the new samurai. "I've seen them all in combat and I know their strength is great and real. For Hidan, I saw it first-hand. I had to fight him in the street, and he was basically calling me a whore until I beat him, even after I threw my sheath straight at his face." Her happiness had faded into annoyance by the end and her eyes had narrowed a fraction.

Even in the short span of three days she had been gone, Tsunade had missed her apprentice. Seeing her emotions melt and freeze and spark had always been a small joy of hers. "You and I need to have a talk soon. I'd like to know more about them. And why the one with black hair was just holding your hand." The last comment was quick, unexpected; she'd been hoping to make Sakura blush.

Instead, the pinkette's brows came together slightly and stared at nothing. She looked more confused than embarrassed. "Yes, well…I'll tell you what I know." Her face changed again, to shock this time. "Oh, I just remembered something! Everyone, don't leave just yet!"

People's faces turned to her and the excited, happy comments quieted. Tsunade's eyes flicked to the samurai to see their reactions to her voice. Yes, their eyes were all on her. And from the stillness of a few of them, those few hadn't had to move, as they'd already had their eyes on her.

"I'd like Ino to meet Deidara." Sakura announced, and her master's mouth twisted to keep from laughing. Ino's face would be outrageous as _hell. _"_Minna-_san, where's Ino? Did she go already?"

Tsunade looked around in the crowd for Sakura's friend but couldn't find her. Apparently, when the bandits had first arrived that day and Tsunade had wisely told the villagers to stay in their homes, Ino had stayed inside. Perhaps she hadn't heard the happy voices of the others as they watched the battle? Why else would she stay inside? She stopped looking when Sakura left her side and, slowing her pace respectfully, extended her hand towards him. Tsunade's mouth parted in slight surprise, then her face sprouted a smile when she asked if he would come with her. The blonde samurai agreed and the crowd parted for them as Sakura guided him towards the farming fields.

The boy that had held her hand followed instantly and remained just a step behind Deidara; the other blonde and Hidan followed, too. Tsunade's wild grin chased them all till they reached the crest of the hill and headed downhill to the fields. In a way, she didn't have to have a certain talk with Sakura. She knew now that some facts were too obvious for her apprentice to try and hide. She'd left home to find samurai, and come back with _admirers. _

Of course, they'd talk about it anyway, if she had to tie Sakura to a tree to make it happen.

Now only the taller of the two black-haired men, and the redhead, remained here in the fore-section of Konoha. Villagers were slowly taking steps towards them and asking more questions. Ayame, the cook Teuchi's daughter, made her way very nervously to the redhead and presented him with a necklace strung with three little shells, which Tsunade had seen her wearing since she was little enough for her father to bounce on his knee. The redhead did observe the necklace for a moment, but then gently pushed her hand back and said something Tsunade wasn't close enough to hear. She cursed slightly; whatever it was made Ayame nod and put the necklace in a pocket. The man was apparently not greedy. Good.

She looked to the other one, the black-haired one. He was being approached and prodded by a fair amount of children, and that caught her attention. Tsunade squinted and tried to look into the red, quite literally red, eyes of the black-haired man. His mannerisms were friendly and certainly approachable, and his smile appeared genuine. But she had seen him embroiled in the fight with the bandits just ten minutes ago, and that had not been the persona she'd seen.

Whilst saving Hidan's ass, as he'd put it, Tsunade had shoved two men aside to make a space for a good swing of her sword. She'd had a moment to look through the gap she'd made. And there was that man, holding up a bandit by his neck with one arm—with a small and perfect circle of undisturbed space around him. No other bandit would enter, or even tried. They all moved smoothly around it.

Tsunade hadn't had time to see what end the unfortunate bandit had met, but she had seen the man's smile. He gave a similar smile to the children of Konoha, but his eyes showed only innocence and contentment. He was facing and interacting with the villagers like a friend. None of a typical samurai's arrogance was about him. None of his…possible family's arrogance was about him.

Well, enough with observing. It was time to meet them now. A small frown came to her face almost naturally: it would be a serious hassle if they showed disdain to the world's first female samurai.

The red-eyed man was in middle of speaking with Asuma and Kurenai; Tsunade sauntered smoothly over and planted herself next to Asuma, placing her hands in her _yukata _and then waiting a moment or two. The samurai realized it wouldn't do to make her wait—good!—then told the couple that he would finish his story during the feast and faced her. Standing right in front of him, Tsunade could very well measure by his height, muscular stature, hair and eyes that he…was damnably attractive. And the redhead was looking now, too. They appeared rather intrigued with her, and they damn well ought to be.

"Gentlemen, would you like to walk with me to our gathering place?" she asked them both. "I think you'll appreciate fair change of scenery after that mess."

"Yes, I would like that," the redhead replied; he had a smooth and elegant voice.

Almost at the same time, the black-haired said, "That sounds grand, Tsunade-sama." She cocked a brow at the honorific. She couldn't decide if he was being rude or proper. What few people remained scattered and began heading away to finish up their part in the feast.

"Follow me and we'll be off. You're not obligated, but I'd like it if you told me something about yourselves while we walk." She added as they began moving, with herself in between the both of them. "I have no way of knowing if you're keeping secrets. But it's only fair that Konoha knows some things its protectors."

"I would like one question of my own answered first." The redhead replied. Tsunade inclined her head towards him. "Where do the rest of the villagers live? There are only five houses on this hill."

The five homes here were actually arranged in such a manner that from straight on, from where the battle had taken place, one could not look past them to see anything beyond. The three samurai walked around the last of them and now they were able to see that the hill that sloped rather steeply downward and halted before a wide, flat expanse of lush, cultivated farmland, cut through by straight paths. At the far end of the farmland was a set of other hills. Atop those, a greater number of homes could be seen.

"Most of Konoha is actually over there, samurai-san. Only five of thirty-two homes are over here." She said gratuitously; the view did most of the answering.

"Why arrange it in such a way, though?" said the black-haired one as they picked their way carefully down the hill. Crickets could be heard chirping below.

"There used to be just one up in the front, and that's where the village head and his family lived, but we haven't had a head for a long time. The other four were built just two months ago." Her voice was laced with contempt now. "We were first attacked in February, and it's only because Sakura and I were practically on that hill ourselves that the bandits didn't run down it and burn our crops. Two days after that, Sakura and her friend Lee came to me with an idea. They suggested building more houses on this hill."

The contempt was thankfully replaced with pride. "As those two noted, with just one house and a lot of empty space on this hill, the bandits could very well try to come over and make their camp here, a stone's throw from our crops and our livelihood. They're less inclined to do that if the potential camping spot is filled up with sturdy homes and leaves no space for them. Nowadays, if anyone who lives in those five houses sees the bandits coming, they each have a very loud and annoying bell they can ring to warn everyone, even those in the back section."

A smile lifted her lips at the memory. "So, as the snow was melting in February and the bandits sat a quarter mile away, staring at us, a handful of us villagers were merrily building houses. Besides the practicality, it was also a damn good snub in those pigs' faces. They could glare and project as much hate at they wanted. We simply had no time or effort to spare for chatting with them." If only that were the case now.

They were at the bottom of the hill now. The grassy ground evened out quickly and the blonde chose one of the prettier paths through the fields to walk through with them, the one called the butterfly path. Wheat rose up fine and wispy on their left and right and the tallest leaves gleamed with reflected, fading sunlight.

"So you're a samurai and a carpenter?" chuckled the black-haired one.

"And a doctor," she couldn't resist adding. "It was my first calling."

"Really." Murmured the redhead. The curiosity in his voice made Tsunade flick her eyes towards him.

"Hm? Have you got any kind of sickness or injury I can help you with?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No. I merely have an interest in healing, as well. My grandmother taught me."

A man learning anything from a female was enough to catch her attention. She decided to test him. "A grandmother…Did she teach you the remedy for black bones? The one that supposedly only old folk know?"

He raised one fine brow and replied, "You're talking about that nonsense with rabbit meat and feverfew? That's a merchant's trick to sell to desperate fools. You can't mean that, can you?"

"I mean exactly that," she grinned. "The fact that you know it's nothing but nonsense is impressive. A third healer in the village will be welcome."

"Is the second that woman who wears rabbit feet around her neck?" asked the redhead.

"You mean Anko. No, she's a butcher. The second is Sakura. She is learning both swordsmanship and healing." She stared ahead on the butterfly path with half-lidded eyes. "Speaking of which, I notice the two of you—all the samurai, in fact—have been paying a special sort of attention to her. You, for example," she eyed the tall, red-eyed one now, who smiled mildly back. "When the bandits began heading away and you all walked that last stretch to Konoha, you made sure to walk that stretch with your arms splayed over my daughter, and you kissed her. What am I supposed to make of that?"

The man smiled. "I'm attracted to your daughter, Tsunade-sama." He replied plainly, and the world around them seemed just as silent and shocked as Tsunade. "I don't judge women merely on beauty, you know. She has that, and more. Her eyes are very expressive, and she moves like a bird, even when she's angry. She talks about you and Konoha so much I'd almost think this place is her own god. I admit I wish I could have that role. I want to make that a fact."

Tsunade all but gaped. Eyes. Beautiful. Her god.

"How curious that one can hear similar testimonies from convicted pedophiles," the redhead spat—spat!—immediately after him.

"How curious that you're pretending you don't think the same," the black-haired man replied cheekily.

"I didn't see you protecting Sakura when that monster of a man was thrusting _tentacles _at her, or at any other time." He replied a little more calmly, but then glared. "When she was shedding those pigs' blood, I kept them from striking her from behind. I watched her and protected her at every possible moment."

"You _watched_ her?" the taller fellow repeated tightly.

"Of course, rat-eyes. She's powerful. She's entrancing."

They started to argue. She didn't hear them.

Entrancing. Protected.

Who the _fuck _said anyone could call Sakura those things.

"Shut your mouths." Tsunade hissed. They did. Even the crickets hiding in the crops went quiet. They may very well have been feeling the overflow of her rage. The gods only knew it was hurting her to keep it contained and keep from ripping the hair from these men. She looked at the redhead now. "So you think the same of her. Both of you. Both—and any others in the group?"

They were smart enough to answer her quickly. "Every man she brought here." Said the one that had been called "rat-eyes." "I think you're talking to the two most stable of them right now."

"Stable." She stated. They knew it was a question and knew she was quietly demanding an answer. They each gave her some.

"The younger blonde. Naruto?" the redhead supplied. "The one who danced when he heard the word 'ramen' a few minutes ago? He goes into a literal rage when someone threatens your daughter. And that cultist gets aroused at the sight of blood. You may have seen that when you fought with him."

"That one who held her hand is my nephew. Sasuke. He's moody, and possessive as a child. If the choice comes up, he'll save Sakura instead of your villagers without thinking."

"The other blonde is—"

Tsunade stopped walking. "I don't care." They stopped, too, a step ahead of her, and both wore cautious masks. "Sakura has had two sorts of admirers. The sort that gaze in awe at the complete upset of social standards that she is, and those that whistle at her from tavern bars and call her things you'd call a pretty whore. Which are you? What will you do, that I'll have to guard her from?" The last comment was spoken with an unveiled suspicion.

"What do you mean, 'guard?'" asked the raven-head.

Tsunade fought to keep from sneering or hissing at him. He knew damn well what she meant. "Are you going to steal her clothes when she bathes? Sneak in and touch her while she sleeps? Touch _yourself _while she sleeps?" Their faces were beyond shocked now, but she couldn't let them have time to interrupt. "I'm a mother, samurai-san. My first duty is my child's safety and happiness. And if you threaten that, if your force anything on her, I will throw you to Kakuzu and _help _him gut you."

The three of them stood in the butterfly path, silent and wary of each other. The samurai woman soared inside: her claim of protection was made. They'd be goddamn careful of putting their lustful hands near her daughter now.

The quieter one was first to speak. "Nothing as vulgar as that will happen, Tsunade-sama. I won't rip your daughter from your side like a desperate drunk. I want her to come to me of her own will, and _that _will happen by whatever means I can find, whatever means Sakura will like."

'_He wants Sakura to come to him.' _Tsunade thought, slightly soothed. _ 'Like a fish to a line. Or a cat to a treat.' _

"Hmm, so gentlemanly." The raven-haired one commented pleasantly, then met Tsunade's eyes. "He will take his time luring her, then. I suppose that's fine. I prefer direct approaches. Sakura knows I'm open and always happy to be near her. She will appreciate my treating her as a dearly loved equal. And I will love her for everything that she is."

Tsunade's eyes were wide as tea saucers and she did not know if it was right for her heart to flutter, or for protective rage to consume her again. The redhead's were narrowed in undisguised hate…or jealousy?

The raven-haired fellow's eyes swung slowly away, almost shyly. "Not everyone prefers…open, open as I am. Sasuke never lets me forget that he thinks I'm irritating as nails on glass. But if she ends up disliking me, I will know I tried my best. I've never been afraid to take gambles."

Without her consent her mind latched onto that last word. Without her consent her voice was asking about it. "What other kinds of gambles do you take?"

"Whatever he feels is fun at the time." The redhead answered for him, then clarified, "I've spent a lot of time in the capital in my life, and there you hear about the affairs of everyone. Two years ago, was it, sometime in September? You lost an amount that could have bought a hundred horses."

"Once!" The raven-haired man spat back. "And only once! And the losses were made up in the end."

'_He gambles. Or did 'once.'' _Tsunade thought. Again, without her consent, a smile crawled up her face, but it wasn't for the gambler alone. She now had insight into these men's minds. Neither would force. Both would try to encourage Sakura to come to their sides by herself. By being…good. _'What truly godlike men you've found, Sakura. They will never leave you.' _

'_Nor will they ever leave you _alone._' _Her smile turned catlike.

Now they were both watching her smile almost deviously, her hands in her sleeves and a twinkle in her eye. For the second time, they were wary of her (good!). She inhaled a bit and said, "If both of you are telling the truth about this, then I'm delighted, and you have my blessing." The deviousness faded just a bit when she added, "Sakura has a strange lack of interest in a love life for a young woman. Her desire to be Konoha's guardian consumes her almost completely. One of you two, or one of the others, even, will have to show her that life is bigger than that. Will you do that?"

The redhead said in his pretty voice that yes, he would, he would teach her that, and Tsunade trusted him. The other one did, too, but his eyes suddenly weren't so playful anymore, and his smile wasn't so innocent. Tsunade recognized the face of a man thinking something absolutely, undeniably sexual but let it alone. Just this once.

She said to both of them, "Good luck to both of you…and beware." She turned and started walking again, wondering as their steps sounded behind her whether they'd take the final comment as from her wrath or Sakura's. Then she stopped, turned around and halted right in front of them.

"Er, I'm not comfortable giving permission for my daughter to be courted…" Tsunade imagined a hand the size of a horse slapping her for her idiocy. "…by men whose names I totally forgot to ask."

The red-eyed one bowed slightly. "Uchiha Madara." He said. Tsunade's earlier suspicions were confirmed. She had an —no, _two _—Uchiha on her side. Luck be damned.

She had no guess for the redhead, though, and watched while he bowed as well, the bangles on his wrist clinking pleasantly. "Akasuna Sasori, my lady." The name rolled neatly through her mind: Akasuna. It sounded sophisticated, aristocratic. As respectable as him.

She was glad to know their names now, but learning people's names _after _having a deeply important conversation with them was awkward so she wasn't sure what to say or do now. She grasped for something to say; if she couldn't handle this situation, handle _all _situations, their wariness and respect for her strength could fade by any increment. She settled for, "Well, we've hardly got a stone's throw to go. Let's hurry. Tell me your favorite things to eat. I know where every dish is going to be set up."

She listened, and told them which part of the long reed mat would hold their favorites. She listened, but her mind was elsewhere: here, there, out over there, and other places not appropriate to be mentioned.

666

April 3rd, sunset, within Konoha.

666

With every beat of his heart, his blood pulse. And with each beat and pulse, Sakura was feeling Uchiha Sasuke on her hand, but the feel of him wouldn't stay just there. It managed to get into her stomach, and boil and churn there, till she felt just shy of positive that she was about to be sick. It wouldn't do to look at him, either. He was goddamned pretty, and his appearance attracted the eyes. Attracted? Dammit.

It wasn't like her to be so quiet. Especially since they had all told her that being quiet just in the hopes that she wouldn't irritate them was just annoying. So she'd have to talk. Odd, that that was sounding difficult now.

"Sakuraaaaa!" Thank the gods, Lee was here!

He came speeding down the hill and started down the salamander path, straight towards them and looking like he was charging up a hug. Sakura tugged Sasuke's hand and muttered, "Let go. Let go or he'll _guhh._" Whatever she could have said was stopped by Lee's arms crushing the air out of her.

"Oh, Sakura, I'm so happy to see your return!" Lee gushed, and for once she wasn't too happy to receive it. "You were gone a day later than usual, did you know? An entire day without you!"

"The _hell _is that?" Hidan spat.

Sasuke's grip on her hand had only tightened, and his voice was a threat: "Sakura…"

"Lee! Lee, get off! You have to meet these people."

Lee gasped and tore off of her like she had something contagious. He bowed sharply, once twice, thrice…then started crying. "Gods above, samurai have come at last! You're here, great warriors! I simply cannot believe I just ignored you as I have! I have only the flimsy excuse of caring for my friend's safe return! I'll think of a punishment for that insolence!"

That was a flimsy excuse for him? She bonked the side of her fist on his head as Hidan sniggered behind her. "That's a good reason, _baka_! I missed you, too! Now, look." She gestured with her free hand to Hidan at her side. "I guess you were still in the back section of the village when they arrived. Here are some of our samurai. Two more are still in the fore section."

Wiping away tears, Lee bowed again, presenting himself formally. He put a hand across his chest. "I, Rock Lee, am a devoted villager of Konoha, great samurai! I am a runner of messages, and sometimes a watchtower guard!"

"Watchtower guard?" Naruto repeated behind her. "You didn't say you had a watchtower."

There were indeed a few things about Konoha she hadn't mentioned to them. She settled for gently swinging her hand in Sasuke's and whispering like it was a great secret, "We have a watchtower."

"Hey, Sakura!" cried another new voice, and the pinkette gleefully recognized Asuma's strong voice. He was on one of the many parallel paths, the closes one, the rabbit path. She could see his arm waving above the corn stalks. "Would you take them to the gathering place? We're all finished."

"Already?" She called back.

"Tsunade did tell you 'within the hour.' I'll see you there!" He broke into a light run and went towards the large back section of the village. Lee sputtered a quick goodbye and ran to the gathering place, probably to be a server. She was left alone with the samurai again.

She didn't let the pause drag on. "Are you hungry or not? I could always eat your food for you," she muttered.

"You steal _any _kind of meat from me and there will be divine punishment involved." Hidan said almost threateningly, and she had to laugh. He sounded almost like Kiba. "In fact, if you don't do what that guy said and be a good little lady and escort us there, you're probably goin' to hell. So let's move!" He pushed on her back and Sasuke's, which got a grin out of her and an unpleasant growl from Sasuke.

She felt his hand on hers still and tried to soothe him: "Just move along, Sasuke. We'll be there in just a minute and you'll have people begging for a chance to fill your plate for you."

"You had better sit next to me," he grumbled.

"And me!" Naruto piped.

Deidara growled at them. "_Now _who's five years old?" Sakura laughed aloud at that, and a breeze blew by. Again she realized that Konoha was safe now. It was safe to…be happy.

The farm field ended and a series of little hills appeared before them. Sakura steered her little herd over to the largest one and they climbed it. Houses peeked up over the top of it, and once they'd reached the top, they could see a great many villagers rushing from various homes and storage houses with pots and dishes and armfuls of chopsticks. She sped up, guiding them around several homes and through one small garden till they came upon the gathering place. The pinkette watched all of their faces as it came into view, wondering at their thoughts.

The gathering place was merely the only area in this part of the village that had no homes on it; it was clear and flat and empty but for the fire-pit in the middle, and for this occasion, three reed mats sitting in front of it, decorated with dishes, pots, plates and bowls of all types of foods. Sakura paused to look at Deidara, and noticed how his eyes flickered at everything, at every dish, as though he liked the variety as opposed to the feast itself. Well, he damn well ought to appreciate the variety: Kurenai's New Year's dumplings were piled high on her treasured red china plate, salted pork was lined in neat little rows that surely Hinata had arranged, and on the far left mat, there was a giant, steaming pot of ramen that Naruto had been anticipating.

"Sakura-chan." Naruto whispered in her ear. "I think I just died."

"Am I seeing ribs, on the right?" Hidan asked. She confirmed with a nod, and he added on, "Oh, _fuck _yeah." And licked his lips. It felt odd letting her gaze linger on such a thing as Hidan's lips, so she looked at the food, too. Except now, Tsunade was blocking the view of the front mat. She slammed her sword down on the ground and placed her hands on it.

"Samurai-san!" she boomed, and all who had gathered listened. "Your presence here is a gift so large we can't even put it into words. All we can do is give you a gift back, and here it is. Every delicacy Konoha has to offer, and it's yours. Thank you for being a part of us, and thank _Kami_-sama my daughter found you all." Her eyes glinted; Sakura smiled out of habit, and suddenly felt the feather-smooth sweep of Sasuke's fingers over her palm.

"_Kami _-sama is great and all, but I'd like to thank whoever made the ramen," Naruto noted. "can I have that first, Tsunade-sama?"

"I don't care what you have first." Tsunade scoffed. Behind her, someone lit the fire, and brought light to the dark evening. "You have it all first. Konoha's saviors, if you would please take what you like…" She stepped out of the way and invited them to come.

Deidara and Naruto went first, the former passing her with a quiet, "Come, you too." Once they were halfway there and the villagers were murmuring and laughing at the celebration, she couldn't ignore the owner of the hand who still held hers.

Sasuke met her eyes and she held them steadily. "Do you have any favorite foods?" she asked him. "I guarantee it's somewhere in there. But you'll have to wait if it's ramen. Naruto's sprawled over the entire pot."

He paused before answering, which was completely unnecessary, in her opinion. "I'm fond of tomatoes, in any form."

"Well…" She glanced over at the flurry of activity taking place at the mats, and tried to remember which dishes various people had planned on making before she'd left for Tanzaku. "There are tomatoes mixed in with the salted pork. There are dumplings with diced tomatoes in them. There's a little plate of tomato slices covered with basil leaves. Somewhere."

Thankfully he did not try to fondle her hand in any way again, merely replied, "First comes your food. I refuse to go to the salted pork when Madara is there."

Sakura scoffed at him. "Fine. I like plums, and they're on the very edge of the left mat. Let's go before Iruka eats them."

With many villagers and a fair amount of samurai bustling around, Sakura fetched two plates and plopped a group of plums onto hers. Chouji appeared, wearing his father's wartime headband, and insisting on filling Sasuke's plate. Sasuke let him and made a big show of acting irritated about it. On one hand, it was childish, on the other, quite funny. She asked for a fan and someone brought her one, and she gratefully blew cool air onto her face, refreshing when standing near the steam of so much hot food.

People sat in a loose mob, anywhere in the clearing, with clusters around each samurai. Sakura sat down several meters from the fire, which was awfully close to Sasori, she found. He raised his hand in a vague wave to her, then returned to answering a question that Shikaku was plaguing him with. Sasuke ate his tomatoes first.

Some twenty minutes later, Kiba's sister Hana stood up and waved to her. "Sakura, I think it's time for some entertainment!"

Many heads went up at this. Naruto's was first, and he had the face of a confused dog. Sakura started to flush, either with pride or embarrassment, she honestly couldn't tell. "Hana, I've just eaten! You want me to get sick? Is that your twisted plan?"

Grinning like many other villagers, Hana put a hand on her hip and replied airily, "I was only thinking that the samurai you found probably don't know that when you're at home, you turn into an acrobat every couple nights."

"Acrobat?" Madara repeated, sitting up.

Hana proudly faced him and said, "Yes, but a violent one! You should have seen her, one day last November—"

"Y-Yeah, I'll do something!" Sakura said, standing up suddenly. "Oh, my sword—what—who took my sword?"

It suddenly appeared, coming up towards her face. "You put it down by your legs, Sakura." Sasuke told her.

"Ah. Yes." She took the sword and its sheath in her hand, then looked at the crowd sprawled out all around her. "I'll need some room, please. I don't want to spear you all." Immediately, folk began to move around, clearing her a space like an oval, or an egg, of which she was the peak, as always. The samurai were watching with great curiosity. _'I can't disappoint them._' She thought. _'If I ever impressed anyone…I had better do it well, right now!'_

As Hana said, she'd done this a thousand times. Indeed, every couple nights, or just whenever the children demanded it, Sakura would leap around with her sword, or two swords or three, throwing them and catching them and sending them flying high into the sky with a beast's strength, and many more things it was far too arrogant to list. But how to start?

Well. By stepping, probably. Sakura took two steps forward. Then moved her left arm far out. The sword was held delicately between her middle and ring fingers. She felt its smoothness, closed her eyes, breathed. Breathed again. Calm. No violence here, no.

With utmost grace, Sakura swung the sword around, balancing on one foot, then swung it straight up. The sheath slipped off and landed somewhere far away with a barely-audible clatter. She was almost facing Deidara now, and he'd dropped a chopstick onto his phoenix-painted cloak at the sight of her. But she'd hardly done anything! Sakura could not help but smile here. Now for the true show.

Now Sakura exhaled, and in that exhale she swung her entire body, and the sword swished out of her grip, flipping around and around and it would stick into her shoulder in another moment—_thwack! _She struck the handle with the flat of her hand and in just half a moment it was flipping the other way, too quickly—_thwack!_ She struck it again and it flew towards her shoulder again, and another _thwack, _and another, and Sakura was striking it repeatedly, using that constant movement to keep it in midair.

"_Sugoi_," gasped Ino from somewhere she couldn't see. Sakura grinned again. Ino thought any and all actions with a sword were incredible, but this one very well was. It had taken several years of sliced skin and a few cut nerves to master it.

Now she struck from below, and with her true strength. Her fist hit the bottom of the sword's handle, and it went blade-first into the sky.

Hidan said something that did not sound as though it were Japanese, but he was mostly drowned out by various gasps and exhales of awe. Now Sakura gulped. This had given her the most injuries in the past. Tsunade had given her more than a few punches when she'd kept practicing it despite Tsunade insisting her strengths were pure power and not agility. Well, guess who won that one, mother dear?

The sword was coming down again, blade down. She realized now she probably should have kept the sheath, as it would have been damn impressive to catch it inside the sheath, but alas, she'd have to do without. Now Sakura moved to the left a little, to be straight underneath the sword. She put out her hand, open slightly. A rush of silver flooded her eyes—and she caught it by the blade.

There wasn't even a full second of quiet; Kiba's unmistakable voice burst out, "Yeaaahhh!"

Close to a hundred other congratulatory comments flowed her way, and she breathed in and out, smiling, feeling wonderful, happy, and best of all, at home again. Her home had new residents for now—like Naruto, not even five meters away, staring with his jaw hanging open; or Madara, who had pushed his hair aside so both eyes could see—but it was home, and she would defend it till her last, bleeding breath.

The eyes of her samurai watching her all made her think that, yes, they would, too.

666

Whoo! Glad that's over with. Oddly enough, just like Chapter three, this chapter was rushed towards the end because I told myself I would update _something _before I went to my local anime convention, and I thought this would be appreciated more than Pathway (though I can't shake my addiction to the Pokemon-Naruto crossover for the life of me.)

The second POV was originally going to be Deidara's, and you were going to find out a little more about him, but it got to be too lengthy with little going on so I axed it and made it Sakura's. I admit her sword acrobatics at the very end were partially inspired by the delightful movie "Kung Fu Panda." I would so put Sakura as Tigress.

But the first POV section is more important, I think. We have yet to get into Tsunade's mind and find out what she thinks about all this, and now we have. She is a little over-proud, being the first known female samurai ever, and gets a little mad when she doesn't get her deserved respect. But she can put that aside a little if Konoha's safety gets in the way. She's also crazy protective of her adoptive daughter, as you may have guessed when the two most suave of our samurai admitted to her that they were very interested in said daughter. (Madara wants to be her _god._ Insert Hopeless Romantic's Squee here.) However, as the chapter title indicates, she did give her blessing to try their best at courting Sakura (though many samurai spent the chapter walking around and laughing with her, forming a starting friendship, which they _need _before becoming "involved" with her, ja?). So Sakura can't depend on her mama do protect her from suitors. Oho~

See you soon. I'm off to get my sleep before cosplaying and hopefully purchasing a Sasuke plushie tomorrow~

Ta…Storm


	7. Truth

Merry Christmas, fanfic friends. Welcome to Storm's Christmas Bash, a triple update of fanfics! This, a new epically long oneshot and...Mother of God. Airborne (not ready quiiiite yet. BUT SOON. It's really back!) But you're here, so you must want this gift more.

This chapter begins with Deidara's POV. It was rather difficult for me since I haven't written Seven from his point of view since the first chapter, written in December of '09. Since my writing's improved since then, I pretty much had to re-create what I consider to be Deidara's way of thinking/writing for his POV. But for my struggle I got to at last write a DeiSaku scene. That scene marks the place in this story when the samurais' feelings for Sakura (Deidara's first, of course) are acknowledged as less "lol" and more "srs." Beware.

Oh, and in other "samurai" news, some of you may know a bigshot nineties anime (Storm's very first anime) by the name of Rurouni Kenshin…it's getting a reboot anime in 2012! Huzzah! Imma go look at the sneak-peek screenshots now.

666

April 4th, early morning

666

Having spent three weeks in the ever-changing whirlpool of Tanzaku, a world of noise, danger and heated intrigue, waking up in a neat little cottage on a sleeping mat made just for him was very odd for Deidara. On the other hand, he had spent the previous night sleeping with warriors under the stars, so why was this so remarkable?

He lay on his stomach and balanced himself on his elbows, laced his hands—damp as usual—and felt the warm silk coverlet on his back. He observed the little room that had been reserved just for him. Each samurai was handed off to a family to be sheltered and pampered and treated like a god and Deidara liked that. He especially liked deserving it. But his room, with its propped-open window and new incense sticks and a little abacus on the table, was kind of humbling. This village was not the wild, moving beast that Tanzaku was, but it felt pleasant and warm to be here.

The window outside showed a square of sky that was still shaded heavily pink. Really early. The Inuzuka family were farmers like most others here, but their morning farming chores were probably being postponed so they could sleep off last night's food and festivities. But the enemy wouldn't be doing that, would they? Weren't the villagers really damn clear about how the bandits liked to sit a quarter mile outside the village and just stare at them?

Yes, they would be there. And if they were there, Sakura would be there, too. She would stand and glare and dare them to come an inch closer. Actually, she'd be there even if they weren't, to watch the sun rise and prance about her home territory. "The bandits have all gone!" She would say to him. He would see light playing on her skin, all of her skin. He would see her sun-smile. "Do you know…that means to world to me, Deidara…? Deidara."

This thought forced him out of bed. The gods only knew what would happen if he remained lying on his back thinking about her. The place his hands would go.

Standing up now, he remembered that he'd changed into his one sleeping _yukata _before going to bed, and his clothes—his clothes were in the corner, folded and looking suspiciously crisp and smooth. He picked up his cloak and a trace of river water and summer air on it. Someone in Kiba's family had washed Deidara's clothes as he slept. A kind favor on top of their idolizing, on top of their gratitude. _'How…nice.' _

No matter what Tanzaku or its slithering population said, favors were not all covers for requests in return. He changed clothes, and felt instantly as fresh as though he'd come up from a bath. Even the phoenix he had long ago painted on the back of the cloak glimmered as though with an extra coat of paints, each little shine and stroke a new and unexpected display.

Deidara put a hand into the tiny space between the sliding door of his room and the wall, and pushed it gently aside. Here in the main room lay Kiba's mother. She was curled facing the fire pit and covered with a homemade blanket. He stalked neatly past her and opened the door at the opposite end of the room to the outside. Now dawn in all its pastel shades and fine blends of shadow were open to his eyes, along with a dozen or more cottages, connected at their doorways with whimsically curving dirt paths. Deidara ignored all of these and instead headed the way he knew the front of the village was. On the way, he spotted Anko—she was a butcher or cattle-herder, or something with cows—he hurried behind another cottage so she wouldn't see him. He was in no mood to talk with a grateful local right now.

Three homes later, the maze of cottages was behind him and Deidara could see the downward slope that led to Konoha's massive field of crops. On the other side was the little hill with its five little cottages. Surely beyond them Sakura waited.

It was almost obscene how much of his thought she occupied, a vague little rational part of him murmured. But Deidara tended to look at rationality only long enough to spit on it. Rapture was rapture, and she inspired that anew in him with every step and smile and breath. Every explosion of violence and loyalty, and every naïve little nuance that suggested she didn't quite detect that he was attracted to her. Today, he would change that, he resolved. It was time.

He thought about ways to change that as he strolled down one of the many straight paths cutting through the crop field. Its many scents assaulted him the entire way, but he was through the place and climbing up the hill to the fore of Konoha quick enough. Once the five homes on this hill were out of the way, he could see Sakura. She was next to the plain little wooden arch that marked the entrance to the village, in a new kimono that was deeper red than the only other one he had seen her in. It, too, was made short enough to expose most of her legs, and it, too, unfortunately, was accompanied by a garment that covered the tops of her thighs from being exposed, rather like pants cut far too short…or cut fantastically short.

She had her hand atop her sheathed sword as though it were a walking stick and was holding something up to her mouth. Her posture became stiffer suddenly, and she turned around and saw him. After daintily swallowing a piece of her fruit, she waved at him. "What are you doing here?" she asked when he was within arm's length. "You have hours to sleep yet before anyone will be up."

"Same goes for you."

"Same does _not _go for me. This is my favorite time to be awake and about and a feast the night before won't change that."

He scoffed at the pinkette. "What about a battle, mm? Does that change anything?" She raised her brows and inclined her head the slightest bit and looked adorable. Deidara's eyes lingered on the minute movement of her lips. "I'm wondering if you would sleep longer if you felt sure the enemy wouldn't come back in the morning. Or am I wrong?"

She inhaled deeply once, but not to prepare a retort like he thought. "You're not wrong. They've snuck up on us before and I can't tell when it'll happen again. So yes, I'm also watching for that."

Deidara felt a flare of satisfaction at having guessed her thoughts correctly; though the moment faded, it burned inside him yet. And steadily. "Then I'll watch with you, mm. Sit down with me."

He was the first to move, but he kept his eyes on her, watching her movements, the small sways and gestures she did by habit, uncontrollably. Her reaction was the tiniest frown, her fingers squeezing lightly down onto her palm. She must have sensed he wanted more than to sit next to her. How much she sensed remained unknown to him, even as she sat in the grass by him, facing forward but with her slim legs folded to the side, knees pointing toward him. The first light of dawn was spilling onto her legs. "Sakura. Look at me."

The morning around them was blessedly quiet; when Sakura obeyed and turned her head slightly to look at him, all he could hear or sense was that she was finally seeing him. She did not mistake his intentions now.

Deidara moved in close till their breaths were mingling, but for only the length of one. For one breath he tasted the scent of blossoms grown in the sun and in the next the taste of Sakura became his. He kissed her and an great piece of him imploded with joy, burst and burst and soared again as he ran his tongue across her smooth lips.

All before realizing what he was tasting and reveling in were rather small. Because what he had touched his lips to was not Sakura's entire mouth. She had turned her head minutely to the side just before he could press his lips completely to hers. She tried to _dodge._

And then she backed away—_'Nonono come back! Please!_'—and stared at him. Mouth parted, eyes faintly narrowed and with her fingers spread like angry claws in the grass. "What was that." She stated, instead of asked. It came out weakly, and he frantically invented reasons as to why she would say such a thing. But he had to say something, too, more clearly than ever.

"That was my way of finally getting you to understand I'm attracted to you. I'm attracted to every move you make and every word you say and I have been since I saw you fight that man in Tanzaku. So now you really know."

Sakura stared at him with a blank face. Then her eyes narrowed slightly, pulling her soft brows together. This news appeared to neither shatter or elate her, and that frightened him. Her reactions were all wrong. There was no _way_ that she felt…negatively toward him; he would have known. Between them, Sakura's right hand was kneading the grass between her fingers. "Y…I had…I think this is a problem."

All of Deidara's mouths bit their tongues.

"This is a _problem _because if you're speaking truthfully—"

"I'm speaking truthfully, mm!"

"Then I-I'll be—" The grass under her fingers came up, clawed through. She paused. And it went on forever. "Deidara. What did you come to Konoha for?"

"Because you wanted me, Sakura. And I want you to want me as more than a useful swordsman. I want to be your lover."

This revelation shattering all her impressions of Deidara and bringing forth strange new ones was clearer than a thunderbolt. She looked conflicted again. Confused. And then scared. She was a hundred tiny thunderbolts now, sparking everywhere and he was instantly fighting not to kiss her again. "No one's ever wanted me like that before." she said quietly, and he quashed the hissing little bit of his conscience that said she was blind as a bat for thinking that. "At least not in the way I think you mean. A lover can also mean someone you sleep with and never speak to again. I don't want—"

"That is _not _what I'm talking about." He said, and it was fierce enough to convince her. She went on.

"I know men who are like my fathers and brothers, but never ones like that. A…suitor."

Now his own hands were kneading the grass, and the little fangs inside them took frustrated bites out of the ground. "Well, now you have six who aren't going to leave you alone. You have to pick one of us."

She glanced at him with a funny half-smile on her face. "Six. You and the other five samurai?" He grunted a confirmation and her smile grew. "That's…insane. Incredible." He paused, because she was right about that, and deserved a few moments to allow the knowledge to soak in. "I had…wondered. A bit. That explains their faces. And a lot of things you all said."

His hand-mouths still bit the ground. "I can't understand how it took you this long to see. But it doesn't matter, mm. You know now. The other five would say this to you just like I am if they got the chance, and more. We're here for _you_ and you can't ignore us or make us go away."

The acknowledgement of six men hunting her was frightfully new. She smiled, but it looked like resignation. "I suppose I can't. But I can always…leave the area if I see you coming. Or hide."

"Then we would come after you." He chuckled. The idea of chasing a swift and flustered Sakura was more than he could bear at that moment; the image was darkened and put away. He thought of something else. "Or just leave Konoha, mm. Maybe then you would come after me instead."

The reaction was that of a wildcat. The shooting up, shoulders tensing and eyes narrowing so swiftly the pupils seemed to contract to a feline's demonic slit. She looked powerful, like a lioness, like a storm with many secrets. The lioness' frowning mouth murmured to him, "You would leave Konoha? So easily?"

For her, of course, he thought dazedly. "Of course."

Sakura attacked him. Her fist connected to his left shoulder like a running bull, and then he was flat on the ground yelling aloud at the pain. He thrashed once and was beat down again. Her legs were on him, all of her was on him, and suddenly her sword was being shoved two-handed against his throat. Deidara panted. He heard her growling at him, "Take that back. Now. I didn't bring you to my home so you could leave it behind whenever you want! Take it back or I'll drive you out myself!"

"You couldn't be rid of me if you wanted to, mm." He rumbled back. "I do care about Konoha. I care about you more. And I'll protect it and you."

The sword stayed still, but Sakura was trembling as she straddled him; he felt it everywhere. "…I'll beat you if you're lying to me."

"Yeah, I know." He chuckled back, and even that sent a fresh, red flare of pain all around his torso.

"I hope I won't have to," she replied, very fast, and rambled on, "Because you've been an admirable beacon of hope and all types of strength since the first day and you're really very funny and I like you."

Deidara's neck was a hair away from being punctured by a sword and he probably had bruises underneath his phoenix-backed cloak, but he didn't care. He soared. The wind blew against their sides and reminded him that the world was still turning outside their private space. As it died down again, he grabbed Sakura's blade in his left hand. She was reluctant to move it, but it didn't matter. Sakura's soft and unsure confession marked the starting point of his true claim on her. And if he truly wanted her, he would have to expose all of himself: all his virility and artistic beauty, and his ugliness.

He opened his hand fully and stretched the fingers. Her eyes widened hugely. They looked like perfect spheres of jade, a treasure the shogun would curl his greedy fingers around, but this treasure was now his. If she would accept what she saw. A little mouth biting down on her blade.

She stared at it. And stared. It was just like a few minutes back, when her reactions were all unpredictable and cool. _Kami-sama, _if she shied away from him now…

The closest the pinkette would come to a reaction was to loosen her grip on her sword. Deidara's mouth kindly let go then stuck its tongue out slightly before pulling back in. Sakura held her sword upright in one hand, pointing up at the clouds. It dropped and swung like a broken clock hand and thumped down onto the ground. And a hundred furious beats of Deidara's heart later, he realized her eyes contained no horror. She looked confused indeed, but Deidara was an artist and he recognized fascination when he crossed it. He heard her say, "And what's that?"

It was done. She hadn't fled or even turned away. Deidara felt the flare from before begin to burn in him again. "That's my secret for now, mm. I can tell you soon." He had been lying almost flat for a while. Now he began to sit up. "I want to know yours, too. I want those secrets to be mine."

Sakura, who still sat atop him, was fidgeting and looking like a trapped sheep now, but that was to be expected. He put his arms around her and trapped her fully. "I want to start…like this." He kissed her again and she did not dodge from him.

This time with the meeting of their lips she jolted in his lap, unwillingly pushing her body closer to his and rising up just slightly onto her knees. The movement parted her lips for him and he pushed past her cherry lips and let himself in her mouth. The feeling of near-implosion he had felt before returned nearly full force again, and he knew Sakura felt it, too. She grabbed his shoulders to steady herself and clenched her lithe fingers on him.

Deidara pulled back not even an inch for breath and for a glance into her eyes. He saw that her fluid mind and her natural responses to him were fighting for the rule of her. He almost chose to watch this war, but realized her breath came out in a soft pant, and couldn't stop himself from going to her again. Even if Sakura was too dazed to really kiss him back, he reveled in this moment. If she chose him in the end he would kiss her and feel her against him many times, but nothing would be quite like their first true touch.

She curled her fingers further on him. He took in another swift breath, but Sakura suddenly gasped, her eyes nearly closed. That sound, a mere, "ahh," echoed in his ears. It was soft but undeniable evidence that that had been her first taste of pleasure and it had been from _him. _He touched his lips to hers a third time, very briefly, and stopped. Yes, it probably was time to stop.

Here, Sakura drew a breath and licked her lips once; she still tasted him. She locked her gaze firmly on his shoulder, so that she was neither looking straight up nor bowing her head. "Now what?"

That was a good question. Now that he was completely clear on his feelings towards her, now… "Now you decide if you want me. Decide if I'm better than the others."

The maiden's eyes shot open suddenly. She scrambled up onto her feet, half-kicking him once and coming close to his hurt shoulder. She was looking around like a frantic bird and in another day or time it might have looked hilarious. He did chuckle at it a little.

"Oh, gods. Oh _gods. _Someone might have seen. WhatamIgoingto—" She paced once and ignored his gentle request to sit down again. She whipped her head back at him and stared. "I'm—I'm just not used to the idea that people can see us doing that. People are going to be doing things like _that _to me and my villagers might _see._"

Now it was coming close to hilarious. "Well, that's the damned point, Sakura. This isn't a secret. Someday soon you will hav—" He stopped, only because her expression was too drastic to ignore, and was no longer amusing. She looked haunted. Horrified. Like Kakuzu and a thousand demons and all of burning hell were walking across the plan toward her.

He turned slightly on his spot in the grass and felt sun on his back. "What's so frightening about this, mm?" He asked her.

"I don't know." she murmured back. The noble, fanged lioness had faded on the wind. She was a cub now. "All of it. Every aspect that I don't even know yet. I have to pick a lover and I have no idea what I'm doing. Or if I even want this." She paused. "What if I don't want this, Deidara? What if I say no to everyone?"

'_Ridiculous._' He thought instantly. Sakura's efforts had pulled six godly samurai into her presence, each one strange, each one powerful, and each one, Deidara knew by the black grudges in their eyes, aware that he was in the presence of formidable foes. They tolerated each other only for her. For this woman before them of power and sweetness and honor who put them each on their knees. None would be dissuaded. None would leave. And all were worthy of her. The idea that Sakura's future lover would be anyone _but _one of the six samurai she took home with her from Tanzaku was utter bullshit.

Deidara smiled at her. "That won't happen. You will choose one of us."

She remained quiet and observed him from across their small gap of space. From over the hill, beyond the five houses upon it, they both heard a sudden sound: a voice calling Sakura's name, and heavy footsteps thumping closer. Sakura's lips parted and closed and she gulped, some of her terror returning. She looked at him for assurance and he gave it tenderly, truthfully. "People are going to see,Sakura, but that's not a reason to worry, mm. It doesn't matter. This is about what _we _want." We, he said. As though they were already one.

The voice called her name again but Sakura wouldn't turn her jade-jewel eyes from him. "I'm not the only one who's going to be judged here." She said.

And he had something great to say to that, something fantastic, but the goddamn villager appeared from behind the foremost house and came plodding forward. It was the fat son of the fat cook. Chosuke.

He waddled down the hill, carrying a plate of some fruit or something. His sleeves were tied back as though he was preparing to go do some physical labor. Sakura turned her body towards him and said, "Hello! Good morning, Chouji. Why aren't you eating the leftover ribs for breakfast?"

Chouji. That's right. (Hadn't he missed someone else's name recently?) Deidara stayed still and unbothered as the cook's son came a step closer and bowed to him. "And good morning to you, too, samurai-sama!" Deidara more or less tried to sound nice and friendly when he returned the greeting. Sakura lifted a slice of purple something off the plate and bit the edge of it. But then, "So what are you two doing over here at the front hill so early?"

Something very like a bomb went off in Sakura's head, collapsing her smile. Deidara found it to look amusing; he grinned at her and Chouji saw it. "Aha! Discussing battle tactics!" Chouji said, gesturing forward a bit with his plate. He, too, was grinning. "My parents wondered how soon it would be before our protectors started cooking them up. Well, here, take this, I have lots more at home. But don't eat that reddish one, throw that to the birds. See you, Sakura!" Chouji shoved the plate into the pinkette's hands and ran like a racing hound across the hill and then down the opposite side.

Sakura stayed still. "He knows."

Well, his gossip-hen face had been difficult to miss, splattered all over his face like it was. He sniggered. "Yup." He tapped his foot on the grass. "Come back here, Sakura. Relax with me before all your friends wake up, mm."

And _there, _just like that, the lioness flared to life again. She was ready and sharp, and confused, but there was a definite shine of thought and a plan in her eyes. "'Relax' with you. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure if I want to just right now, Deidara."

"Yes, you do want to, Sakura, or else you wouldn't have let me do it the first time."

"I mean _right now._" She said a little more softly. "I have no idea what I want right now. Except time to think about something. Are you going to make me feel bad for that?"

Of course not. Perhaps through the light of her true personality, he could see it better: she simply wanted to leave the situation without hurting him, or any of the others. 'Let me go and find out who I want and what's going on,' is what she was saying, whether or not she really knew it. And that was…fair. So he said, "No. But I'll keep waiting for you to come back to me. You gonna make me feel bad about that?"

She squinted her eyes at him just a little bit, irritated. He chuckled at it. "No. I'll…" She looked away, and then up. Anywhere but at the man who might have her and claim her very soon. "I'll see you later. At lunch or something." She turned away and began walking, almost in defeat. Weakly. Perhaps now that he couldn't see, she still moved her tongue about her mouth and lips in search of a last taste of him. Perhaps that was why she was turning her head back at him a bit as she walked. "Thank you."

From beyond the fifth and last house on the little hill, Deidara suddenly spied Sakura's mentor, the lady Tsunade, whose face was more impassive than an Uchiha's. The blonde kept his eyes on the retreating girl, conveying his intentions for the new observer a last time. Just in case she had missed it.

Tsunade flashed out of sight and Deidara absolutely did not miss the _smirk _on her face.

666

April 4th, mid-morning

666

The time was right, and the time was now. Tsunade approached her apprentice from behind as she went down the village's front hill and toward the large crop field. That she wasn't noticed or heard was a little incredible. The girl's pale legs still shook minutely and it was time to find out why, from her mouth instead of the samurai's. The woman called, "Sakura. Come here."

She looked back, surprised. "Tsunade-sama, good morning. Yes, I'll wait for you." She could see Sakura's face now, a little flushed. Her lips were minutely swollen and a weak, panting breath fluttered through them. She had bright eyes and hands that didn't know where to place themselves and a gait affected just so by the swaying of her hips. Sakura's pose and presence and voice were painted completely with the nervousness of a girl's first encounter with a man. About damn time.

Tsunade walked a bit faster to move in line with her apprentice and they started down the hill together into the crop field, feeling sunshine and a few kinds of warmth. "Good. Walk with me. And tell me about the samurai, my dear."

"What do you want to know about them?" the pinkette asked mildly.

The samurai woman smiled a little. "Well, the fact that each one is attracted to you is what I'm really interested in."

Sakura's face collapsed into horror; Tsunade almost choked on laughter upon seeing it.

"Sakura, it's beyond obvious now. Perhaps you didn't notice as you met them and brought them home, but your face right now looks pretty aware. Deidara-san must have told you himself. And then turned your lips and cheeks red and made your legs shake." These features on Sakura suddenly were highlighted and she walked with her hands cupping her elbows, pathetically feigning that nothing was happening, nothing was wrong, while she continued to suffer little shakes of new pleasure. "Look at you, you're still panting from whatever the ordeal was. What happened between you two just now? It was your first romantic experience and you _will _tell me what happened, young lady, this is _very _interesting."

And there it was. Sakura wasn't getting out of it now. "Tsunade-sama…how did _you _find out?"

'_When I saw you approaching the battle yesterday with warriors who watched a woman instead of the bloodshed.' _

"Oh, I got my first hint when the redhead wouldn't leave your side during the battle. Then another samurai kissed your forehead afterward and another held your hand…oh, and of course, Sasori and Madara told me themselves."

The pinkette sputtered and tripped on seemingly nothing. "They told you? What?"

Tsunade inclined her head slightly at the vegetation leaning green hands all around them. "It was yesterday, as we walked to the feast. It was on this very path, in fact." She replied with a smile. Sakura looked her in the eye, lips parted slightly. There seemed to be no answer coming from her so Tsunade rolled onward. "They told me about all the members of the samurai troupe, how each one is attracted to you and can hardly stop thinking about you. Madara said something to the effect that he'd like to be your _god, _and Sasori about pounced on him for saying it. They asked for my blessing in courting you and I was impressed enough to give it."

Her apprentice was watching the ground before her feet with the eyes of a cow seeing its own impending death at the butchery. Tsunade gave it little thought and spoke on. "And you just learned of their feelings from Deidara, I assume. So tell me how you feel about this. I'm really curious, Sakura, this is your first romantic experience, it's exciting! Of course, the way it's happening is astounding and a little ridiculous, but it's here and it's real. Tell me, tell me, how do you feel about these men?"

Here it was, here it was! She said, "…I don't know. They're all admirable men…I enjoy their company and…and I like them, I suppose. I thought they could help save us. I thought I found saviors."

Well that was nice and all but where was the _meat? _"…and?"

"And what?"

"You did bring saviors home, Sakura, and they're extremely attracted to you. That's the part I want to know about.

"And what am I _supposed_ to think about that, Tsunade-sama?"

"Well—"

Sakura snapped around. Her eyes and whole presence burned as though Kakuzu were here to ignite her rage, and Tsunade took a step back from the fire. "What should I think? What? Should I be enchanted and melting at their feet? My village is being assaulted by murderers every other day and suddenly I have to stop and deal with, with romance?" Tsunade stood like a weak stem on a rainshower. Waiting…and suddenly sad. "I have no _idea _what I think about this because, you're right, it's ridiculous and it's not fair, and I don't know how to act around them now."

The samurai girl turned slightly and put her curled hand and its sleeve over her face, almost out of Tsunade's view. "Deidara said he wants to be my lover." She said, and the blonde's brows shot up in at his boldness.. "He made it sound like he wants more than just sex from me. But how can I tell? I have no idea how to tell what a man wants, not like this. I don't know and it's not fair and I like them all, and I don't want any of them to just…use me."

Of course, Tsunade realized. Of course. Gods, what in the hell had made her miss this? "I'm such a gibbering, fucking gossip." She said instantly. She put her hand over her girl's shoulder. "Sakura, Sakura, I'm so sorry. I should never have assumed or forced you. I saw that men were approaching you, _good _men, strong and noble ones and I thought…I thought that…you haven't had a speck of romance in your life, and you should. I just thought that one of these men could surely make you happy and realize what this lifestyle has made you miss out on. My old impatient ways came back and I just couldn't wait to hear what your first kiss was like."

Her small hand uncurled and now all the fingers covered her face. "You asked me what it was like, when you already saw it?"

Well, now she had to laugh. Just a little bit. A little. "Hmm, yes. It seemed pretty…positive to me."

Sakura exhaled one swift giggle with her eyes closed. "Yes." She confirmed, but said nothing else. They walked on. Asuma, Kurenai, and woodcutter Kyoji were already dressed and tending to the yams and rice plants along the nearest parallel path in the field. They all waved to their protectors. Tsunade kindly returned the gesture and blocked Sakura's lowered posture with her own.

"I know it's very sudden, my dear. And strange. But you needn't worry so much about it. The samurai don't view you like some brothel girl. You know that. I know it, too. They told me so." Sakura lifted her head a little from the safety of her hand's cover, open to assurance. Tsunade smiled and gave it. "I told you how I gave Madara and Sasori my blessing in their courting you. That's not something I give out to any single-minded, ugly little lowlife. Only the best deserves you. I gave my blessing to strong, good-hearted men who think you're the brightest, most admirable and perfect woman they've ever seen."

The pinkette's listened attentively, and Tsunade gave her more. "Sasori was very clear in assuring me he doesn't want to force you into anything. He wants you to come to him. He wants it to be your decision, and while you decide, he will covertly protect you from the others he sees as a danger. Madara especially seemed to ruffle his fur, only because he's not really…he's a little flamboyant." Sakura smiled a little more and agreed to that point. Suddenly the April sun was a little warmer on them. They were halfway across the crop field.

"They talked a bit about all the others, too." The samurai woman went on, this time with a small drizzle of distaste in her mouth. She hadn't exactly given her blessing to the other four yet. Especially for that one…but she had to go on, had to tell Sakura that her outlook was grand, and it was. "Hidan, the cultist, froths at the mouth like an angry sailor in battle. During the feast, when he was around you, it was most definitely toned down. He civilized himself. And Sasuke…well, their good word for him was nothing compared to how devastated he looked when you stopped holding his hand yesterday. Like the sun itself was leaving him behind."

Sakura inhaled a little. "I noticed." She said. "Holding hands with him was nice. I suppose only now I see…that that was quite meaningful."

Her mentor nodded. "They're all good, Sakura. Never think that you're merely a pretty brothel girl in their eyes. No one would dare think that of you. But," and Sakura reacted a little too guardedly to the word, "don't pretend that desire isn't a part of attraction. Some of this is sexual, and that's new to you, but you can't exactly avoid it. It's certainly not just for brothel girls. It, too, is positive. Don't be afraid of it."

Her apprentice met her eyes with a small frown. "But I am. A little. Or more than a little."

"Mm, natural, I suppose. It's quite the opposite of anything you're used to." She quirked a brow and crossed her arms. "Actually, your opinion of things like that is probably black as a hellpit since you've only heard such words and concepts from the mouths of drunken tavern-dwellers. And perhaps Ino."

"I guess I'll deal with it when it comes." Sakura murmured quietly. "I guess my only option is to see what happens. And to be honest with myself. But," she turned her head slightly, pulled all attention to her fierce expression. "I will in no way put this before Konoha's protection, Tsunade-sama. I'm a warrior for this village first, and always."

And always, indeed. It would be many turns of the moon before Sakura so much as thought of stepping down from her post as Konoha's great guardian. Tsunade clapped her hand on her student's shoulder again. "Good. I'd expect nothing less of you. This doesn't mean you get to weasel out of telling me about your first kiss, though." Sakura's smile fell a fraction. "But before that, I have a more serious matter to talk to you about." And she was at full attention again. "How familiar are you with the chakra these men carry?"

The answer was hardly necessary. Both of them clearly knew of it, but there was reason to worry still. "Not enough, unfortunately. As always, it's very hard to sense. But I think that most of them have at least a sliver of it." Sakura said evenly. "Sasori clearly has just enough to create strings to hold up his puppet. His maneuvering of it using the strings is masterful. Madara and Sasuke each have a small reserve, but it seems to be contained completely in their eyes."

Tsunade grunted softly to herself at the pinkette's deductions. Nothing less was expected from her. "Good work. But they are not the ones who greatly concern me. What do you know about Naruto's chakra?"

A bird called overhead and cast a shadow on them both. Sakura said, "I had meant to bring this up myself. Excuse me for forgetting such an important matter. Tsunade-sama…Naruto claims that his chakra _talks _to him, and its name is Kyuubi." No words would properly fall from the samurai woman's mouth in reply, so her apprentice continued. "The first time we met, we shook hands, and I felt it myself. I felt it within me like a splash of water. And afterward he told me my name, where I was from, and that I like watching sunrises. And I could feel and understand things about him, too. I knew his name instantly. Just because we touched."

_Kami-sama, _her guesses had been nothing in comparison. This was like a myth, a fireside tale. This didn't happen in any folk's life. Where had that boy _been_? "You know, I'm inclined to believe him." Tsunade replied. "If only because I can feel his chakra myself." It was a strange thing to say, to even suggest. Chakra was, almost always, not a force that a person could feel like the whisk of cool water or turn of the wind. There was a bit more to say, though. The rest had to come and it seemed stuck in her throat like some adolescent confession, but dammit, this had to be addressed! Sometimes you just had to spit things out. And there. "And his chakra frightens me."

And there. She could see Sakura's face turning dark in confusion, in wonder, and she couldn't be blamed. This was an unexpected thing and it made them both silent and subdued. But clearly one of them had to lead, and her apprentice always followed her, so she went. "It's vast as a sea. That I can feel it at all is testament to that. And it's dangerous, make no mistake. On the other hand, you've had direct contact with it, so you know more than I."

She looked up absently at the approaching hill, where most of Konoha's homes were. It was a swift reminder that their reclusive time on this crop path was almost done. "He described it as an orange fox." The girl began. "And that's exactly what I saw when he touched me. It was an angry thing and it scrutinized me. Pulled at me. I thought that perhaps he pulled things _away _from me. My name, and such. I really believe Naruto's chakra is…is sentient."

Now for the final step. "What does the Kyuubi think about you, Sakura?" Tsunade asked. Did it have killing intent?" _'Are my fears right, and did you truly bring a monster home with you?' _

But she shook her head. "Not that. At least not for me. Kyuubi has tried to make Naruto hurt people in the past. But he said that Kyuubi pointed me out to him and told him to," She paused to chuckle and look away. "to look at the samurai vixen."

"Goddamn." Tsunade chuckled mirthlessly. She noticed Lee and his father on the roof of Miyako and Goro's cottage. Soon they would notice the two women coming closer and expect some waving, then some conversation. This talk had to end now. "Sakura, I believe Naruto is a good young man. But his talking chakra is not something I know how to deal with. These samurai mean well to you, all of them, but you must use caution around Naruto. I don't know what could trigger some ugly release of his Kyuubi." And there was the waving. She waved back. Lee shouted something about a hammer.

"I'll come up and lend you a hand!" Sakura shouted up at him, and with her eyes still on the smith's son, "So today I start my days of romance with men and talking chakra."

"You'll be fine." Tsunade murmured. "You and I will find out about Kyuubi together. But today, we're all free to relax from Kakuzu and his ratty little army. So be off now." And she sped her walking, curving imminently rightwards away from Lee and where any villager was currently walking. Sakura continued up the hill towards her friend and Tsunade went her own way, past Iruka's home and the Yamanaka's, till she found a lane between two houses where she was safe to wear her emotions on her face. She copied her apprentice and covered her face with an open palm. She hid, tried to smile, and hoped.

'_Be safe, Sakura.' _

666

April 4th, just past noon.

666

The day seemed long. Too hot. There was some impossible tension in the air, as though the bandits were on the horizon, but there was no accompanying confidence nor will to fight. No protective instinct, no desire to crush bones and cut through hideous bodies. Something all around her was calling on her fear and not calling on her strength at the same time. Sakura had not been so simply _scared _in a very long time.

Lee was having her assist in hammering new roof tiles onto someone's home, and they ate dried fruits and the leftovers of yesterday's fish together. They were alone on that roof for a good while, above everything. She took the opportunity to keep watch, as always, but not for her usual suspects. What if Sasuke appeared and asked her to take a walk? What if Naruto wanted to eat with her? Would they expect her to react nonchalantly now? Would they know what Deidara had said and done? What the hell would _happen _in such a…such a _strange _situation?

"Sakura, the next nail, if you please." She dropped it smoothly into her friend's calloused palm and wondered what it would be like if the nail had pierced through his hand. Or if the roof collapsed. Or if it started to rain, or if Kakuzu sent an army of cats to attack the village. Anything except the idea of men being attracted to her.

Where the _hell _had that come from? And why ?

And what was to be done? Her scrambled, subdued speech to Tsunade had covered her emotions and thoughts at the time and seemed to hold up in her mind, and her sensei's, too, but now that the moment was gone. Now, there was a day of respite, but likely tomorrow, or surely the day after, another attack would be on the rise. Spears would be flying and bones would be smashed and a handsome samurai would approach her and ask to talk with her, to sit with her, to lie with her…

Sakura shivered. Ground her teeth. Quashed a sudden desire to smash something. Her samurai had come at the perfect time, and yet with a directly opposite purpose than they should have. They thought Konoha was worth saving, and she was worth _wanting._ Could she really hate them and drive them out for that? Could she refuse and expel these powerful men, when they were so stunning?

_Kami-sama, _something had to be wrong with her. Perhaps the ugly miasma of Tanzaku still lingered on her skin and in her mind: "Stunning" was such an improper word for her to use like this. "Stunning" hinted at something other than her admiring, good feelings for them. It hinted at other thoughts that an unused piece of her mind created for them and they were strange. She vehemently refused such thoughts and they weren't strong enough to wrest control of her attention anyway. Anyway…

"Sakura-chaaan!"

Anyway. Sakura looked down and saw Naruto running up the hill from the crop field. His red cloak with the black flames lining its hem was gone, leaving him in a rather amusing orange and black outfit. She could see the shine in his eyes from atop the roof. "Hi," she called out to him, and then she thought frantically, _'Say something else something else something else COME ON!' _and added, "Your first objective in Konoha is to take a free day and relax. Or eat a bucket of ramen, if you prefer. Ayame and Teuchi's home is two cottages down."

"But I wanna spend my free day with you!" Naruto whined. She noticed he carried his sword in one hand…and hers in the other. _Kami-sama _only knew how he'd gotten hold of it. "I was with the Hyuugas all morning talking about strategy and stuff. And their girl Hinata said you'd probably be over here today!"

She cocked her head just a bit, spilling a line of short hair down her shoulder. "Hm? You boarded with the Hyuugas?"

"Yeah, they have the biggest house in the whole village! Hiashi-san pretty much wouldn't let me stay anywhere but at his home." the blonde explained. "He's a good man, I think. But he doesn't treat his daughter that nice. I told him to cut it out or I'd go stay with someone else and he about dropped dead right there."

Hiashi Hyuuga falling over was...funny. Especially since the fellow was in some desperate need of either a heavy dose of humor, or a smack to the back of the head. Most of the village would grudgingly agree. Her reaction came slowly, due to having to process such a ridiculous picture. "Wh-! You really said that to him?"

"Yup," Naruto crossed his arms and puffed out his chest absurdly, creating a sort of picture of masculinity as a child might see it. "You want proof, you can go look in one of his big old front windows. He's staring outside looking dead. But at least he didn't spill his precious tea!"She couldn't help it. She laughed. She giggled and wished aloud that she could have been there to see the cranky old goat drop his beloved composure. Composure and civility were actually preferable in her mind, but there existed a select group of people who simply needed to get very large sticks removed from their ass. And threatening them with her sword or her fist was not socially acceptable.

And now that all that had gone through her mind, it became obvious that silence was settling into their conversation. In a moment, he'd restate his desire to be with her. Which was charming, exciting and too frightening all at once. Perhaps she could get away with…with something. Avoiding him and this just a little longer. There had to be just a bit more time to be on her own, before this insane situation really got rolling.

"Sooo, you coming?"

_'Yes? No. I think I should. Shit.' _

"Sakura, you be off with him." Lee said amicably. "Naruto-sama's desires are certainly of greater importance than this mere roof! I insist." It was only too easy, and too satisfying, to mentally bare her fangs at him. _'I may just cave in this roof when I'm through with you!' _She thanked Lee and slipped off the roof, and he clambered onto the opposite side of it. Naruto came up to her like a frolicking pup and she had to fight to keep where she was. If he touched her again, she might feel Kyuubi pulling on her, as she had when they first met. He was coming closer and clearly meaning to grab her hand with his. She couldn't stop it. It was coming. Coming.

Yes, she felt it. First, there was nothing but the warmth of a human hand. No chakra, no monster's presence. But it leaked into her neatly, crawling up her arm and spreading everywhere, into her fingers, smooth down her legs. It was prodding, snagging in places, and warm all around. There was a moment during its travel through her body wherein she didn't breathe. It felt like heat indeed, but her mind insisted it was like a disease. She wasn't supposed to have foreign _things _inside her like this. Its heaviness kept her from reacting as she wanted. She wanted to gasp and leap away. Naruto, perhaps not seeing her discomfort, laughed at her. "Okay, great! I can't wait! Let's go play." He took her hand and stood waiting. "You gotta tell me where, though. I don't know where there's space."

She stood waiting, too. There was a clear difference between sparring, as the swords he carried hinted, and "playing", as he'd just claimed he wanted to do. Her confidence was wobbling back up with this intrusive heat, so she dared to say this aloud. "Why do you say we're going to be 'playing' if we're bringing swords with us?"

"I said 'playing'?" He repeated, and cocked his head, again like a pup. "Oh. Oh, sorry. I think that was Kyuubi. 'Playing' is what he's thinking. He calls me a pup, like I'm really little, and you're just a little younger than me so he calls you a pup, too. And pups don't really hunt or anything, they just play, so...that's what he's thinking." The explanation was rambling and half-constructed. He hadn't said all he meant to say. Or there was something specific he meant _not _to say. The running heat of his chakra gave no information to her this time. But she wondered with a mental hiss if he was not pulling information from her, and refusing to give any in return?

"Naruto, before anything, I need to make sure Kyuubi is not dangerous to Konoha." She said, all boldness now. "My sensei and I know of chakra. Having chakra that's its own entity, that can speak to you, is unheard of for us. We'd like to know about it, if you're willing to share."

He looked close to offended. "'Course I am. I'll tell you anything, Sakura-chan. Just ask." His sincerity was...incredibly sweet.

"Only one question for now. How much influence does it have on you? Can it make you do things you don't want to do?"

He paused and didn't say anything for a few frantic beats of her heart. But he kept her hand clasped in his own, spreading its warmth into hers. It was a pleasant feeling, and she wished for more warmth to chase off this chill. His expression was unsettling. "Yeah. Once in a while he takes control of me. He makes me hurt people. He gets angry really easy and wants me to kill people we don't like. But he likes you, Sakura-chan! He loves you."

The samurai girl remained still and sharp-eyed. But Naruto pushed forward, coloring his words with a matching, light smile. "He does. I do, too. Remember how in Tanzaku I said you're mine? I'm not being silly. I'm not joking with you. You really are mine." He pulled their hands closer, and the rest of their bodies were forced to come along. All of her body was feeling the strange running stream of foreign energy. It made shivers crash up and down her legs and torso. It made her draw attention to his eyes. They were not the same. She could not, would not, pinpoint what, but it was fact. And she could not stop looking.

"Kyuubi says you know who your mate is when you see him. He says that's how it is for his kind and so it has to be like that for me, too. You're s'posed to feel a pull towards him. Do you?"

What kind of creature was this? What kind of human being was this? What answer did he want? "I...feel you pulling on my chakra."

The blonde samurai exhaled one swift laugh, echoing delight. "That's it." That was ridiculous. This entire thing was ridiculous. Why couldn't Kakuzu and Kabuto just attack right now? "And that's really good. But we gotta go do some training now, don't we? Kyuubi's being weird and thinking it's playing, but this is serious. We'll be fighting together for a long time, so we better learn how the other one does it. I know you fight really well, Sakura-chan, I love to watch you doing it. I saw you punching people at the battle yesterday, that was the most awesome thing ever, you know? Like, slice, slice, BAM! Sword, sword, FIST! Hahaha!"

Sakura's lips slipped up into a slight grin despite herself.

Inside, in between the foreign coils of Kyuubi in her, she was more unsure than ever.

666

I originally wrote quite a rushed ending (or, rushed Sakura's POV Section) since I very much wanted to post this on Christmas Day, even if it had to be at 11:59 that night. Fifteen minutes later (now) I edited the last section to include Naruto and Sakura's interaction. As you can see, it's kind of important that Naruto has the Kyuubi in him (as in canon, it's really just a pile of living chakra) and that it makes both him, and his feelings for Sakura, darker than they seem. I probably could operate the story without a Kyuubi-host-Naruto, but, pardon the freaky fangirlishness, I just adore the idea of both Kyuubi and Naruto loving Sakura.

Well, here's your "cat comes out of the bag" chapter. Sakura had to have the blatant realization of the samurai's feelings for her sometime. She had some inkling of it before (it would take a person of Naruto-level idiocy to not think _something_ of Madara kissing her forehead, Naruto calling her "mine" after less than a day of knowing her, etc.) but did basically have to have the truth spat out for her. In a kiss scene ;D Tsunade's words/feelings on this ordeal this chapter threw me for a bit of a loop, since she was not previously aware that her "daughter" was confused and even angry about this ordeal, which makes it less funny. At least, for now. They are both essentially on board with the fact that _something _big will probably happen in Sakura's life due to this. (And that also made their talk kind of awkward to write...)

But! The truth's out now, and Konoha will be protected by samurai on one side and bombed with a love hexagon on the other. Next chapter, it'll be time for another bandit attack. Perhaps you'll get a hint on why the bandits are so dead-set on destroying Konoha in particular, and who's in charge of the operation.

And since it's December 26th now, I can say I hope you all had a very merry Christmas. This is my first gift to you! Look out for the others in the next few days!

Ta...Storm


End file.
